


Do Not Go Gentle

by sassynails



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-28
Updated: 2013-05-28
Packaged: 2017-12-13 06:31:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/821132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sassynails/pseuds/sassynails
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Severus Snape falls into a routine as a way to cope with not knowing how to live in peace. When his newly established equilibrium is tramped to pieces by a series of mysterious events, Harry Potter is the one to try and drag him out of it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Do Not Go Gentle

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was created for 2012 Snarry BigBang. I'd like to thank AccioSlash and BadgerLady for the beta and the marvelous John-and-Mary for the illustrations which you may find in the text.

_This is the way the world ends  
                                                                                                                                                                                 This is the way the world ends  
                                                                                                                                                                                 This is the way the world ends  
                                                                                                                                                                                 Not with a bang but a whimper._  
                                                                                                                                                                                        T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men

 

His alarm spell went off at six in the morning sharp, like it always did, except for Sundays. He had woken up precisely two minutes before, let it ring exactly three times and then cancelled the spell with a flick of a finger. Swinging his legs to the left, he sat up, his feet finding a frayed pair of slippers, unfailingly present at his bedside in the morning.   
  
Walk to the loo, grabbing a fresh towel with a familiar stretch of a hand, brush teeth for forty-eight seconds, look at himself in the mirror. Just for his own amusement, ask his magical mirror about maybe doing something with his hair and then scowl at his expression when his mirror self started looking too hopeful for his taste.   
  
Leave chambers at quarter to seven, taking the same route to the Great Hall every day, scoff at portraits feigning sleep, and for no reason at all brush the shiny belly on a suit of armor that marked the passageway from the Dungeons to the upper levels of Hogwarts.   
  
Take exactly ten points from Gryffindor and five from Hufflepuff, distributing them between students who had the misfortune of running into him (or, if no early birds from either House graced his passage, take them anyway for some contrived offense or other). Give two points to Gryffindor and five to Hufflepuff on Fridays.   
  
Enter the Great Hall from the west wing. The ever-present draughts there provided for the extra billow for his cloak, one of the five identical garments he wore Monday through Friday.   
  
Exchange perfunctory greetings with Minerva, nod to the rest of the staff.   
  
Drink two thirds of his cup of coffee and eat one and a half pieces of toast. Wait till the Head Boy, who, courtesy of Minerva’s politically correct inclinations, happened to be a Slytherin this year, got to breakfast and leave to proceed with the rest of the day, just as measured and accounted for.   
  
And most important, revel in the predictability of this routine, relish every blissfully boring minute of its stability, savour the precious knowledge that each coming day was the exact copy of its predecessor, and nothing, no one but himself had the power to change it.   


 

*****

  
The fall of Voldemort and the peace that followed brought about many things. Things Severus Snape found strange and uncomfortable. Peace meant forgiveness, and there wasn’t a soul alive that had something for him to forgive. Peace meant acceptance, and acceptance was never his forte. And finally, peace meant… just peace. Relaxation, rejoicing. And these had long been the things too alien for Severus Snape to give any serious thinking to.  
  
So, he struggled. He supposed that his scrupulously planned routine was his way of coping with peace. And who was there to judge if it didn’t quite help?  


 

*****

  
Usually, Severus stayed at breakfast long enough for the post to arrive. Mail was part of his routine, expected and predictable. He’d get Potions periodicals, a semi-personal letter or two once in a while. Sometimes he’d even get hate mail. Or love mail. He thought that, since after the downfall of the Dark Lord he’d became somewhat of a celebrity, both hate and love mail could be considered a part of his everyday routine.   
  
Today’s post was no exception. He minimized his copy of  _Weekly Brews_  and put the  _Prophet_  aside in favour of a helping of eggs and fried tomatoes, which was his regular on Thursdays.   
  
“Ouch, look at this!” Pomona Sprout said two seats away from him with a surprised whistle. “Lucius Malfoy has contracted Black Leprosy!”  
  
“I thought it was eradicated even before the Grindelwald crisis?” Vector wondered, chewing on a scone.   
  
“So did I, but Lucius Malfoy is known to get the rarest things.”  
  
“True enough, Professor Sprout,” Bill Weasley, the newest addition to the staff and this year’s DADA Professor, answered with something of a cackle. “I can’t say he didn’t have it coming, though. And I most certainly can’t say I feel sorry for the bastard.”  
  
“That is a rather cruel thing to say, Professor Weasley,” Flitwick’s voice chimed from where he was sitting on his cushioned stool. “The man’s going to die a gruesome death, his body warped beyond recognition.”   
  
“And I say he deserves it.” Weasley persisted.  
  
“The children of Mister Malfoy’s first cousin are sitting at the Slytherin table ten yards away from you, Bill,” Minerva reprimanded him, but Severus could tell she wasn’t all that sympathetic.   
  
“Severus, what do you think?” Sprout asked, her eyes shining with a hunger for a fresh piece of gossip.  
  
“I don’t think anything,” he answered and grabbed the discarded  _Prophet_.   
  
There, on the front page, was Lucius’s smug face next to an old Wizarding photo of the last known victim of the naturally occurring Black Leprosy. Severus hoped to Merlin the Slytherin Prefects intercepted the paper before the lowerclassmen laid their sticky paws on it. He wasn’t up to dealing with nightmares for the rest of the week.   
  
What bitter irony. Severus spared a pitying thought about the lot of Malfoy Senior, wondering at the same time about the work of the fates. Maybe Lucius indeed had it coming.   
  
“Oi, Severus, a parcel for you!” Flitwick elbowed him in the ribs.   
  
He was immediately annoyed. Unexpected parcels were not a welcome part of his carefully calculated and planned days.   
  
“Someone’s got an inheritance!” Vector said, surprised.  
  
Severus looked up from his paper to find an owl, staring impatiently at him. Shoving a piece of toast toward the bird, he glared at his parcel.  
  
“How do you know it’s an inheritance?” he asked Vector cautiously.   
  
“White and silver wrapping, Ministry seal. My brother designed this system for the Ministry some time ago. It works autonomously. If you want to write a will, you do it and enter it into their database. Then, when you die, the database updates magically, your will is processed, and all subsequent documents are generated. They even have it connected with Gringotts. God knows what they bribed the goblins with, but they claim it to have reduced inheritance-related court hearings by half.”  
  
“Interesting,” Severus answered blandly.  
  
“Oh, it is. My brother married a Muggle. He said he borrowed the idea from them. Something he calls ‘come pewters’. You should know all about them, Severus.”   
  
He didn’t answer, hoping that Vector would take it as a logical ending of the conversation. Grabbing the source of his disquiet, he looked at the Slytherin table to make sure Ichabod Avery, the Head Boy, had taken his place and was piling his plate with sausages, and got up to leave.   
  
“Congratulations on your inheritance, Severus. I hope you’ve received a fortune!” Vector said with an insipid smile.   
  
Turning on his heel, Severus exited the Great Hall through the main entrance in a flurry of black robes, thinking of having to take five minutes from his established day schedule to open the godsdamned thing and curse the idiot who had the gall to mention him in their will.   


 

*****

  
The several revealing charms he’d run the package through didn’t point to anything out of order. It was just a plain old Ministry missive: not even an innocuous tracking spell. On some level, Severus was almost disappointed.  
  
His hand moved to open it and stopped of its own accord. Severus huffed and started pacing in irritation. The few portraits in the Potions Master’s office held still and one Victorian era witch in a frilly gown was even raising a hand to her brow with a look of abject dismay on her face.  
  
“Oh, quit the dramatics, Imogen,” Phineas Nigellus demanded, stepping into her portrait. After that horrid year when Snape had spent most of his evenings wearing out a small path in the carpet of the Headmaster’s office, Nigellus insisted on sharing quarters. “Just open it up, boy and be done with it.”   
  
Severus cursed himself for being five kinds of a fool and ripped the package open.  
  
All it contained was a small platinum cauldron. Exorbitant in price, but useless, for all its worth, since platinum had zero magical conductive capacity. A trinket, really. Then, there was a note. Severus unfolded it, and as soon as he saw the writing, his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach.  
  
 _Should you outlive me, Severus, I would like you to have this as something to remember me by and as a thanks for services rendered.  
  
LV._  
  
His hand released the note and Severus watched it swirl to the floor like a large white feather.   
  
“Well, what is it?” Phineas asked impatiently, patting the impressionable Victorian witch on the shoulder.  
  
“Tom saw fit to leave me this in his will,” Snape answered expressionlessly.   
  
A light rumble passed through the portraits.  
  
“See to it that this information doesn’t leave this room, or I will have you all whitewashed,” he snapped at them.   
  
A delicate feminine cough came from the corner, and Severus whipped his head in that direction.  
  
“Don’t you want to scour the note for Dark Magic, Severus?” Catherine Monvoisin’s portrait asked.   
  
And just like that, his reverie was broken. He kept casting one spell after another from his extensive Defense arsenal, but both the note and the cauldron seemed pristine. Absolutely untainted. Of course, he could allow himself to underestimate Voldemort enough to think that he was simply capable of such a gesture. Except that the Dark Lord’s delusions of grandeur simply left no room for such ‘what-if’s’ that made it possible for him to picture a future where he would be dead and Severus would live.   
  
 **Chapter 2.**    
  
“If there is or was anything on these items, Severus, it’s beyond my range of expertise.” Filius Flitwick said with a shrug and an air of finality that made the hollowness inside Snape that much bigger.   
  
“Which is most probably the case.” Severus sighed and was glad to see Flitwick didn’t take it as a personal jab.  
  
“Indeed. This is the most powerful Dark Wizard of the last few centuries we are speaking about, Severus. Who knows the depths he’d trodden.”   
  
“Yes. Thank you, Filius,” he answered in a clipped tone and turned to go.   
  
“Maybe there wasn’t anything but the platinum cauldron?” Flitwick called out to him as Severus’s hand was reaching for the door knob.   
  
Severus whisked around. If half-goblins were susceptible to the killing power of glares, Hogwarts would be on the outlook for a new Charms professor, and the  _Prophet_  would be sporting a corresponding advertisement tomorrow.  
  
“Albus Dumbledore, whom I, for the lack of a better word, served for half of my life, didn’t even mention me in his will. In any of his wills, for that matter. Do you think me such a faithful servant to the Dark Lord that he’d leave me a gift that costs more than our yearly earnings, combined? And that he’d make sure I receive it a year after his death?”  
  
The tiny professor looked even smaller than usual and so appallingly frightened that Severus’s anger popped and wafted away like a soap bubble.   
  
“I can take over your last class, if you’d like,” Filius offered as a peace gesture.  
  
“I appreciate it, but what is the fun in letting you chaperone an advanced Potions class that consists mostly of your Ravenclaw swots,” Snape said entirely without malice. “Now, if your offer stands for tomorrow’s Gryffindor and Slytherin fourth-years, we’d be talking.”  
  
“It’s a one-time deal, Severus.”   
  
“I thought so.”  


 

*****

  
Supper was a sordid affair. If the parcel had only managed to chip at the armor of his treasured routine, the subsequent thoughts about the possible depths of Voldemort’s depravity had thoroughly ruined Snape’s equilibrium by the end of the day.   
  
And supper saw to it that the last nail in the coffin of his peace was finely wrought and solidly hammered into place.   
  
He spotted Potter’s gangly form just as he was entering the Great Hall from the west wing. The light of one of the floating candles caught and reflected in one of his spectacle lenses, making for a momentous flash of light, and it made Severus stop still in his tracks right at the place where, if he were not hindered, his robes would catch the flow of the draught and billow.   
  
For a few seconds, he just stood there, his robes flapping uselessly around him like sails that had suddenly lost their wind.   
  
Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived-Again, was puttering about a small crowd of first-year Gryffindors in a manner that suggested a whole lot of things Severus didn’t like.   
  
“Oh, Severus. There you are,” McGonagall’s drawl sounded to the left, and he turned to be met by a tight-lipped smile. “So, you’ve seen Harry already?”   
  
The way Minerva’s eyes flitted didn’t mean anything pleasant, and Severus begrudged her the pleasure of being weaseled for news. He just stood there silently and waited for the other shoe to drop.  
  
Minerva pursed her lips even tighter, obviously disappointed by his faux indifference, a Gryffindor of the highest order that she was, and blurted, “Well, Harry will be apprenticing with me. And no, you’re not allowed to ask questions.”  
  
The fact was that there wasn’t anything Severus wanted to ask. It was all clear as day.  


 

*****

  
The Wizarding population was small and tight, so the recent war left no family unscathed, Severus was well aware of the fact. After the peace had been finally achieved, he’d been watching them all coping and trying to cope. Some tactics worked better than others, his own being questionable at best. But no one’s survival tactic was quite like Potter’s.   
  
Harry Potter lingered. And clung. And while his peers and friends reached out to embrace the new life that victory had brought about, Harry Potter did his best to hold on to what embodied his past. In the year that had passed after the war, he enrolled in Auror training, dropped out of it—not without quite a scandal, if the  _Prophet_  was to be believed—and spent his time trying to avoid the ever-curious press.  
  
It wasn’t the first time Severus had spotted him lurking around in Hogwarts, his face incongruously forlorn amidst the careless cheer of schoolchildren, who, ever sensitive to the changes in the ether, seemed more reckless and eager than ever, much to Snape’s chagrin.   
  
Potter would come on one made-up errand or for another contrived reason and just stick around in the most annoying way. Part of Severus’s annoyance came from the fact that he could relate. Potter’s insipid obsession with Hogwarts was nothing but yet another coping mechanism, much like his own compulsive need to follow that ‘routine’ of his.   
  
And Severus could tell, Potter had it bad. If he was anything like his father (and Severus would give his wand arm to claim that he was), Potter’s pride would give a peacock a good run for its money. And then there were McGonagall’s rants in the staff room from a few years back about Potter’s bungling mediocrity when it came to Transfiguration that Snape very well remembered.  
  
Potter really, really had it bad if he had accepted such a blatant act of pity on Minerva’s part.   
  
He checked the train of his thoughts before it went into the realms where being able to sympathize with Potter—of all people—was possible.  
  
Now that his day was completely ruined by the parcel, Potter, and—a rotten cherry on top of the sundae of his misery—the loss of a daily robe billow, which never failed to impress the dunderheads, Snape decided that polishing it all off with a snifter of Firewhiskey or three was a perfectly justifiable act.   
  
Not bothering to sit through supper, he stormed off, taking small consolation in deducting an obscene number of points from one of his own House, a fifth-year whose skirt he found too abbreviated to be called a skirt.  


 

*****

  
The next few days passed blissfully uneventful, Potterwise. For all his fame and glory, Potter stayed relatively inconspicuous, as far as Snape went. Severus even managed a cautious return to his routine after that first day he’d spotted Potter in the Great Hall. During meals, Potter was perfectly seated at the far end of the staff table, and meals were the only times Severus had to endure the sight of him. Of course, Potter kept throwing him covert glances full of disgusting knowingness, and Severus was remotely aware of being watched discreetly now and then, but that was all.  
  
Severus attributed the awkward vibes he was getting from Potter to the big old unacknowledged elephant in the room that was the memories he had passed to the boy when he had thought he was done with.   
  
The carefully maintained distance, which seemed to be observed by both of them, as well as the ‘elephant’s’ relatively delicate treatment of its room eventually calmed Snape enough to grudgingly accept the fact of Potter’s daily presence in the castle.   
  
However, his instincts, honed by years of espionage, screamed at him that it was the calm before the storm, and the reality didn’t fail to reassert itself rather sooner than later.  
  
It all started with the steps that day.   
  
Each day, when Severus walked to breakfast, petting that suit of armor, doling out punishments and mentally checking those self-appointed meaningless tasks, he counted exactly three hundred and sixty-six steps from the Dungeons to the Great Hall. Three hundred sixty-six seemed a number magical enough - days in a leap year, normal body temperature, provided that a comma was properly placed. Vector would probably start on sphenic numbers, but Severus didn’t care much for Arithmancy. Three hundred sixty-six was just meaningful. With that last step he always placed his right foot on a peculiarly rounded flagstone. When he put that fat checkmark in his mental ticky box, it was with an amount of satisfaction that was almost disturbing.  
  
And that day, step three hundred sixty-six left him about two yards away from the coveted flagstone. The mental checklist in his mind burst into flame, as if someone had thrown a fireball at it, and was incinerated in seconds.   
  
For a moment, Severus just stood there, blinking. He suddenly remembered a repeated dream of walking naked into a Death Eater gathering, his body stark and white amidst the sea of black coats and masks, his mind also nude, available to anyone who cared to look. Cautiously, he looked around, as if to check whether yet another crumpling of his methodically construed routine, no, shell, was evident, but the children were just as heedless as ever. Gulping in a breath, Severus took two more steps and placed his right foot on the flagstone.   
  
At that moment, he looked up to see Potter staring at him, dawning understanding in his eyes. Pulling his stock hostile demeanor about him like a cloak, Severus went straight to the table, drawing a new checklist for his morning in his head, which now consisted of one less task.

 

*****

  
As it was always with days that didn’t start well, the ending was just as spectacularly terrible.   
  
Snape was supervising detentions, marginally mollified by the sight of half a dozen students scrubbing gooey cauldrons with their toothbrushes when, after a tentative knock, the door to the Potions classroom opened, letting the new Transfiguration apprentice in.   
  
Snape’s punishing quill stopped in its red tracks and dropped an ugly blot on some unfortunate’s Potions essay.   
  
“Another one in for a detention, Professor,” Potter said, pushing a plump first-year Gryffindor boy Snape vaguely remembered labeling among the Longbottoms of that year’s batch.   
  
It wasn’t unusual for the younger staff to walk students to their detentions, especially when it came to first years, and Potter had done it before. What was unusual, however, was that Potter was obviously going to linger.   
  
“Cauldrons are that way,” Snape said in clipped tones, gesturing to the small crowd of half-bent students in the back of the room with his chin. He went back to marking furiously and waited in vain for a soft click of the door, signaling Potter’s departure.  
  
Of course, it never came. When the feeling of being stared at became overwhelmingly annoying, Snape looked up, cast a discreet  _Muffliato_  under the table and sneered. He found the look of understanding on Potter’s face mildly insulting.  
  
“Is anything the matter, Potter?”  
  
“I just thought I should give this.” He placed a small silvery bottle on Snape’s desk. Severus looked up and schooled his features into an expression of utter surprise.   
  
“Why, the  _Prophet_  didn’t offer you enough?”  
  
Potter glared back at him with barely constrained anger, and Severus patiently waited for him to rise to the bait.  
  
And Potter didn’t fail to deliver.   
  
“I’ve considered that, since there’s an apparent dearth of good gossip material in the  _Prophet_. However, with all the publicity you’ve been getting, they thought it was just a ridiculous bit of ostentation on your part.”   
  
Oh, but you’ve learned well, boy.   
  
Severus watched Potter spit his words out, as if he were under a Slug-vomiting hex. Well, boy, you’ve learned but just not well enough. The fact that the bottle was put behind a stack of books so that it was only for Snape’s eyes was much more eloquent than any insincere jabs, however well-worded and precise. Severus narrowed his eyes at the bottle and frowned at such revolting consideration. Potter’s face suddenly relaxed.  
  
“Now that it’s over, we don’t have to hate each other,” Potter said.  
  
Snape blinked.  
  
“Look, I’m not expecting you to wear a ‘we love Potter’ badge in Gryffindor colours over your heart, I just—“  
  
“Do you even begin to grasp how pathetic that sounds?” Snape answered in a low voice, his patience evaporating by the second.   
  
“Maybe, because I am pathetic. But so are you. We are like two leftover pieces of old meat served at a food festival.” Potter held his own well, but a barely there shifting of his eyes was a dead giveaway. He’d probably been practicing that particular line in front of the mirror.  
  
Snape felt suddenly empowered.   
  
“Aren’t you an astute observer, Mr. Potter. And such metaphors,” he said, baring his teeth at the boy. “I’ll have you know that my misery does not want your company, if that’s what you’re implying.”  
  
Potter sighed, but appeared otherwise unflustered.  
  
“I’ve been watching you, you know?” he said tiredly. “You always cut your toast diagonally for breakfast. You start reading the  _Prophet_  with the ‘Classifieds’ page, even if there’s something sensational on the cover.”  
  
Snape held his breath; an image of bowstrings came to his mind.   
  
“You count your steps, for Merlin’s sake, Professor. And you molest that suit of armor on the second floor every time you walk by it! There’s a fucking shiny spot on its belly!” Potter’s voice shrilled to a shout.   
  
The bowstring in front of Snape’s inner eyes trembled and resonated, producing an ugly skirl in his head. His vision might have just become reddish at the corners. Somewhere at the back of his mind, Severus was grateful for his _Muffliato_.  
  
“You are a raving lunatic, Potter. Now, get out of my sight.” A drop of spittle landed on Potter’s glasses, and stood out like a glaring tribute to idiocy, distracting Snape.  
  
“So I am, sir,” Potter said, and his voice held such a bitter note of triumph that Snape recoiled and barely kept his hand from rubbing at his temple, as if the bowstring in his mind let go, and the arrow hit him square in the head.   
  
“And I guess I owe you a thank you of sorts,” Potter said, half-turned to leave, “but I’ll keep it just for now.”  


 

*****

  
It was just past noon on Friday and luckily, Snape’s last class of the week. Seeing the back of the last fifth-year Ravenclaw swot disappear behind the heavy door of his classroom, he almost heaved a sigh. Just after lunch, he was planning to retire and spend the weekend, or at least part of it, getting himself reacquainted with the contents of his liquor cabinet, where alcoholic souvenirs from various events and people had been stored for over two decades. The situation really called for desperate measures, since his fragile peace was shot all to hell. At other times Severus would have found it a relief; he may not have admitted it to himself, but he did know that forcing his days into following a pathetically precise set of idiotic rules was not the best way to deal with… life in general.   
  
At other times he would have dumped it and went back to changing robes when their sleeve cuffs could stand all on their own, and to keeping the oddest of hours. However, there was an engulfing sense of wrongness in all of it that made him cling to the shreds of his routine as if they were a lifeline.   
  
Over the last three days, things kept just falling out of his hands. He even managed to cock-up magicking a Potions recipe on his blackboard. No one seemed to notice anything, to the point where Snape was practically willing to confess to having the strongest bout of paranoia since… since the times he didn’t care to recollect. No one, that is, except Potter. He continued haunting Snape with stares that were obviously intended to be subtly meaningful, if one went by the Gryffindor type of subtle. At times they turned to annoyed glares, and on a few occasions Snape thought he was about to be grabbed by the elbow in one of the corridors.   
  
Potter’s apprenticeship obviously presented no academic challenge, so more often than not, he could be observed on the Quidditch pitch, eyeing one of the teams in training, ruffling his hair in a gesture so James-like, Snape felt jabbed at each time he saw it. He made a mental note to tell Minerva that the boy needed to have his workload increased.  
  
Severus didn’t even bother counting steps to lunch – at least the billow was still in place, and a tiny ‘ooh’ from the Hufflepuff table lifted his spirits slightly. Potter was nowhere to be seen, Slytherin had been maintaining a rather trouble-free routine for a few days, and Snape’s thoughts gradually shifted to the realm of choosing between a branded cognac and an Elvish wine when Minerva tapped him on the shoulder with a cough.  
  
“Severus, Mr. Rookwood is waiting for you in the Visitors’ Room,” she said, her voice stone-cold, eyes glaring with disapproval. There was most certainly a 'what for' to follow.  
  
Snape tensed. What on Earth?  
  
“I will have you know, Severus, that I absolutely do not condone this. A Death Eater, in Hogwarts!”  
  
Minerva was obviously ready to go on with her diatribe, but Snape cut her off.  
  
“A former Death Eater, and he is on parole.”  
  
It almost made his mouth sour to say the words. Rookwood was one of the after-victory do-gooders, those who had jumped ship right before it had sunk. After the Final Battle, he was found by none other than Aberforth Dumbledore with four more stunned Death Eater small fries, claiming to have switched sides. His crimes were mostly alleged, and all those who could testify against him directly were most conveniently dead. So he’d made a deal with the Ministry, which benefited quite a few Wizarding charities and ministry projects, gave Azkaban a dozen more inmates but cost him his dignity and earned a virtual plaque of a traitor from all and sundry.   
  
And now he was in Hogwarts’ Visitors’ room, waiting for Snape with enough impatience and urgency that Minerva didn’t have him kicked out flat on his arse.  
  
Snape felt his insides coil tightly, spared a longing look at the swiftly dissipating tureen of sautèed cuttlefish, and left.  


 

*****

  
“I need a Potion,” Rookwood said before Snape even managed to close the door and silence the portraits.   
  
Severus gave himself a few seconds to cast a  _Muffliato_  and will his face into an impenetrable mask.   
  
There was an eerie air about the situation. It reminded him all too much of another wizard, shooting his “I need a Potion, my boy,” at him, and the gruesome details that followed.   
  
Then something else struck Snape as he was giving Rookwood a closer look.  
  
“Remove the glamour,” he ordered curtly. If Rookwood didn’t have time for pleasantries, he wasn’t about to waste any either.  
  
Rookwood flicked his wand, and the charm eased off him with a puff.   
  
It took Snape a formidable effort to ensure his face remained expressionless. There were two conflicting emotions vying for his attention at the same time. First, a bitter, uncontrollable laughter—shadowed by a horrid, stomach-dropping recognition of as ill an omen as could be, staring him in the face.  


 

*****

  
Several hours later found Snape in his dungeons, Floo shut off, doors warded so heavily even the spirits of the Founders would have had a hard time barging in. In his hand dangled a glass of Firewhiskey, which so far was doing a piss-poor job at snuffing out the necessity to think and analyze the recent happenings. The fact that there _were_  happenings to speak of, besides Rookwood’s desperate attempt to remedy his situation, still remained to be proven, but after the second snifter of Ogden’s, Snape was finding proof overrated.   
  
The direct way to oblivion that Severus was making good time on was suddenly snatched from him by a feminine cough.  
  
“Catherine, why the fuck do you always have to cough before you speak?” Snape said with a slight slur, and turned an expectant glance to Madame Monvoisin.   
  
“Because, unlike you, I have manners,” the portrait quipped, and gave him a level look. “I thought I should give you a heads up about one Filius Flitwick trying to dismantle your wards and making good progress on it, too. Maybe next time I ponder being nice to you, especially when you’re busy pouring whiskey down the hatch, I’ll think twice.”  
  
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake,” Snape muttered, dropped his glass and on boneless legs went to save Flitwick a few nasty hexes.   
  
“How nice of you to come meet me,” Flitwick said with strained cheer. “That time-delayed Fish-eye hex was a bother.”  
  
“You took off my Fish-eye?”  
  
“Why, yes, Minerva didn’t give me a raise last year for no apparent reason, don’t you think?”  
  
“You took off my Fish-eye?” Snape was still incredulous.  
  
Filius huffed and invited himself in.   
  
“I came to tell you I remembered something. You may find it of interest or of importance, or both,” he said, once inside.   
  
Snape shot a disparaging look at Monvoisin, who was looking way too smug for an amateur portrait, and stared at Flitwick, urging him to go on with an impatient lift of his eyebrows.  
  
“It is a trifle, really, but it’s He-Who… Voldemort we’re speaking of. Have you ever heard of  _Ars Fatorum?_  
  
“Fatecraft?” Severus asked, suddenly unsure of his Latin skills.   
  
“Your Latin shines, but you’ve always thought of Charms as foolish wand-waving,” Flitwick said and gave him a toothy smile, obviously having filed that one away for future gibing.   
  
“Cut to the point, Filius. What the hell is this Fatecraft?”  
  
“Not to worry, Severus, your academic dignity is still intact.  _Ars Fatorum_  is such a useless branch of magic, it most certainly belies the solemn sound of its name. It is an array and study of spells that change one’s fate.”  
  
“What does it have to do with anything?” Snape asked, equally annoyed and alarmed.  
  
“It is the only kind of Magic that is completely untraceable and undetectable. Not even at the moment of casting. It has almost no effect, too. What  _Ars Fatorum_  spells do is merely add a chance of various events happening in people’s lives. They don’t even change the degree of likelihood of those events.”  
  
“This sounds incredibly dimwitted. How do you even know this  _Ars Fatorum_  exists?” Snape asked, feigning skepticism, while implications of the mere possibility of such a thing were whizzing by in front of his mind’s eye.  
  
“Most scholars admit that Fate exists, which means that, theoretically, it could be tаmpered with.”  
  
Severus snorted and pinched his brow.   
  
“I really don’t have time for this, Filius,” he said with all the waning patience he could muster. “Even first-years know you can’t get rich purely by magicking yourself a pile of gold and that, on the other hand, one’s Destiny can be in one’s own hands if only they choose to hold it.”  
  
“It does sound like profanation, I know. Fatecraft spells only open the possibilities. But there are a few recorded instances of them seemingly working.”   
  
“Seemingly?”  
  
Filius shrugged, looking like he’d lost some of his firm ground.  
  
“Well, they are so few that they could easily be attributed to statistical uncertainty and miraculous coincidences. You know the story of how Prewetts acquired their flaming hair? One Rosamunde Prewett was so enamored of the colour, she cast a Fatecraft spell on her family, and every child born into the family had this or that shade of ginger ever since.”  
  
Snape’s patience was running so low his foot started tapping of its own accord.  
  
“Stuff of the legends, Filius. Besides, I’m positively sure that this is not what I’m dealing with.”  
  
“Oh. It’s not? Are you… do you know something I don’t?” Flitwick said rather hopefully.  
  
“I do.” And he wasn’t going to indulge anyone’s curiosity at the moment.  
  
It was said with such a prominent full stop that Flitwick was obviously at a loss for words. Luckily for Snape, Filius knew well enough not to pester him for details.  
  
“Just wanted you to know it. Perhaps you’ll find it pertinent at some point,” he said softly.  
  
“And I thank you,” Snape answered, his annoyed expression belying the sentiment.  
  
As soon as the door closed behind the tiny Charms professor, Snape slumped into his chair with a moue of distaste. His rational side, which had been urging him to stop trying one escapist method after another and look into the events of the last few days, scored a smashing victory over the effect of the Firewhiskey, leaving the unpleasantly sober Snape to face the somber facts.  
  
The only thing he was so far certain about was that there was no Fatecraft at work. Tom Riddle wouldn’t bother with such silly and ambiguous magic. Rookwood’s predicament could have been one of those miraculous coincidences Flitwick had been on about, or it could have been yet another case of Rookwood having two left hands when it came to magic more subtle than crude fighting spells. Besides, Fate doesn’t strike twice, does it? What would the chance be of a  _Ars Fatorum_  spell cast by the same person, if it was to be believed that Voldemort indeed used them, to work at least twice within a short period of time? Severus pulled out a copy of the  _Prophet_ from a few days back where the horrendous face of a Black Leprosy victim was staring at him from the front page with unseeing eyes that didn’t even resemble eyes any longer. Next to it was a picture of Lucius, his brilliant exterior making all the peacocks in the world look drab.  


 

*****

  
Monday morning dawned bleak and gray as Snape woke two minutes before six, let his Alarm Spell ring three times and padded into the bathroom.   
  
He took a scouring look at himself in the mirror and found nothing worthy of suspicion. Unless, that is, Voldemort decided to curse him with a few more gray hairs and crowsfeet around the eyes as his parting gift.   
  
And a never-ending paranoia, to be sure, but Severus wasn’t about to underestimate Tom Riddle. All he needed to do was to find the magic at work.   
  
On his way to breakfast, counting steps as usual, he took some liberties with points, flinging his malice and vitriol liberally at the face of those who had the temerity to be in his way. As he passed by the suit of armor and stretched a hand out to pet it, he felt a rougher surface under the tips of his fingers. Turning to look, he saw that there really was the shiny spot Potter babbled about. And his hand was touching the metal just two inches below it.  
  
It didn’t mean anything of course, but the void of unknowingness somewhere inside Snape grew just a tad more.   
  
And then, as his luck would have it, he ran into Potter.   
  
Potter was walking beside a flock of third-years, shouting orders and seeming uncomfortably incompetent, as children scattered about him like beads off a necklace come unstrung, and he stopped in his tracks just as he saw Snape.  
  
“Hello, Professor,” he said, giving Snape a scrutinizing look – the only thing left over from his brief Auror training. “Haven’t seen you in a little while.”  
  
“It’s only been three days, and I could do with quite a while longer,” Snape quipped and gestured for Potter to step aside.  
  
Potter ruffled his hair again. This time it occurred to Snape that, perhaps, the move wasn’t exactly James-like. There was a barely seen lack of confidence James never had. Or maybe he’d never taken too close a look and had only wanted to see the arrogance in it. Never mind, Snape told himself.  
  
“Are you okay?” Potter asked, suddenly looking concerned.   
  
Instead of feeling a wave of anger at such misplaced chumminess, Severus tensed in suspicion.   
  
“Why wouldn’t I be?”  
  
“Right, right.” Potter sounded slightly rebuked. “You just… look different.”   
  
“You are seeing things, Potter,” Snape grumbled and pushed by him.   
  
He didn’t sound half as rude as he wanted to. And he could almost feel Potter’s sad look on the back of his head.  


 

*****

  
Ichabod Avery, a quiet, self-effacing seventh-year who, in Severus’s opinion, made a good Head Boy and a bad Slytherin, came promptly after dinner.  
  
“I received your summons, sir,” he said after a polite greeting, and took the offered seat in Snape’s office.  
  
“Good evening, Mr. Avery,” Snape said in a tone he hoped was conducive to a frank discussion. “I have rather personal business to discuss with you.”  
  
Avery Junior looked at him with the flat, friendly expression of a Head Boy. “Yes, sir.”  
  
“How is your father, Ichabod? I haven’t heard from him in a while. I know that he’d left the country immediately after the war to avoid persecution.”   
  
Watching Avery’s Head Boy mask peel off his face like the frail old husk of an onion, Snape felt as if someone invisible were blowing a chilly breath onto the back of his neck.  
  
“My father is dead, Professor. He has been dead for half a year,” Avery answered, and his nostrils flared slightly.  
  
“My condolences,” Snape said in a rough semi-whisper. “How did he die?”  
  
Ichabod Avery gave a bitter chuckle. “If you look at it in a detached way, it’s almost funny, you know? Ironic, really.”   
  
“I’m afraid I do know.” Snape’s voice made a hollow, alien sound. Maybe, it was just the strange acoustic effects of the dungeons. As the Head Boy told the story, Severus decided that maybe he’d discarded the Fatecraft magic too easily. And the fact that Voldemort, despite his mindset, had been a wizard of immeasurable power and talents.  
  
After Ichabod Avery left, Severus retired to his rooms and pulled out a small silvery vial of memories that Potter had returned to him a few days ago. Why hadn’t he brought them earlier? Had he looked? Who else had? Snape tried to feed something different to his paranoia, but it didn’t work. He just couldn’t bring himself to care. After the memories had been removed, there was an emotional vagueness left in their place. In his head, Snape knew what they were. In his heart, he didn’t feel them any longer. It was a queer state, and after a while, a welcome one.   
  
 _A small, tiny man, Severus Snape, but I can raise you to heights unfathomable now that you are with me._  
  
It was what Voldemort had said to him the night he’d received his Mark.   
  
Remembering the deep, lilting voice, full of promise of all things wonderful, and how low these ‘unfathomable heights’ really proved to be was usually the best way to start a trip down memory lane that ended with Snape wallowing in regrets and self-hatred, successfully shutting out anything else of concern.  
  
And again, it didn’t work. The words were just a flashy phrase that belonged to the past now.   
  
He rose and started pacing the room in a familiar circle that had worn a slightly lighter pattern on his carpet over the years. After a few laps, it was as clear as recipe cautions and warnings spelled in fiery letters on his blackboard, so that even the most dunderheaded of his students could see.  
  
For the first time in Merlin knew how long, Severus Snape was afraid for his life. Even though he still didn’t have much of a life to speak of, at least he had it all to himself. And he wasn’t ready to part with it.  


 

*****

  
Surprisingly enough, Potter’s accommodations weren’t in the Gryffindor tower. He lived in one of the older, mainly unused parts of the castle, which housed a few guestrooms overlooking a small closed courtyard.  
  
When Potter opened the door, Snape could swear that for a split second there was something akin to a pathetic triumph flitting through his eyes.  
  
“Different how?” Snape asked, deciding to skip the misdirection and storm the main gate right away.  
  
“I’m sorry?” Potter said, letting him in.  
  
“You said I looked different earlier today. Different how?”   
  
“Why, is something the matter?”  
  
A house-elf wrapped in a pillowcase with a Ravenclaw sigil popped in with a tray of tea things and sweets.  
  
“Can’t you just answer the godsdamned question, Potter?” Snape asked petulantly, and, cursing himself for ever giving Potter’s wide-eyed concern a standing chance, turned to leave.  
  
“Wait now, just wait.” There was something in Potter’s voice that made him stop and turn around.  
  
“You barge in here without so much as a hello and expect me to jump at the chance just to talk to you?”  
  
“Basically, yes.” Snape seethed.  
  
“It doesn’t work that way. I at least have a right to know what happened.”   
  
“Nice play at your Slytherin streak, Potter. I don’t give a flying fuck about your rights.”  
  
This time Snape had already grabbed the door handle when Potter reached out to catch his sleeve.  
  
“Alright, you stubborn idiot!” he yelled. “I’m not playing stupid Slytherin power games with you!”  
  
Snape turned around, feeling like a volcano ready to erupt. Potter lifted his hands up in surrender, but the total absence of fear in his stance was suddenly a very refreshing sight to see.  
  
“You do look different, ok? But I can’t tell what it is. Maybe you’re just having a bad hangover. And maybe there was a good chance I was trying to make small talk. But  _holy fuck_ , Snape, why the hell do you have to be so uptight? Isn’t there a place in your head for an idea that someone might simply give a damn about you?”  
  
Snape sighed and rolled his eyes in defeat.  
  
“Not staying in Gryffindor doesn’t make you any less of one, Potter, no worries there,” he said with a bit of poison in his voice. “Rushing in like a bull, stomping on privacies to appease your need to show the world you care.”  
  
“Don’t make it about the House, Snape,” Harry Potter said tiredly, and suddenly Snape felt chastised. He stood still, expeditiously devising his escape with unscathed dignity.  
  
“I may not have made an Auror, but I can tell something’s up with you. You can act up all you want, I will not give up on you this time,” Potter added, grabbed a cup of tea from the tray and gulped it down like it was whiskey.  
  
“You could at least offer me a chair,” Snape answered and went for the second cup.   
  
Two hours, six cups of tea and two fingers of Firewhiskey later, Snape was heading to his room with mixed feelings. First, he was utterly dismayed at Potter’s promise to introduce the heavy artillery into the fight: at that very moment Potter was owling Weasley and Granger. Then, there was growing fear. Between the two of them they surmised that there could have been at least two more casualties and one on the way – Potter seemed to know more about the whereabouts of the former Death Eaters than Snape did. And, adding the strangest tang to the mix, there was a glaring, juvenile hope, its novelty so crisp, Snape had given a silent five points to a Ravenclaw boy he had passed on his way back: he had the same puerile sentiment shining in his eyes. A new girl, maybe – or a new book. It didn’t matter, unlike the sense of momentary kinship, which was a welcome experience.  


 

*****

  
Severus Snape sat in a heavily warded classroom that had last seen a student in training when he hadn’t even been a gleam in his mother's eye. He had absolutely refused to conduct those…  _meetings_  at Grimmauld Place, as Potter had initially suggested.   
  
Snape scowled at Potter, who was quietly tasking a house-elf with tea and biscuits, scowled at Granger, barely visible behind a stack of parchments, books, assorted quills and what looked like colour-coded charts.  
  
Ronald Weasley, who had added at least half a foot in height and shoulder breadth to his trainee Auror badge since Snape had seen him last, walked around the teacher’s dais with a half-eaten scone in his hand.  
  
“So, let’s sum up all we have so far.”  
  
“Avery seems to be the earliest death, but we haven’t had all the known Death Eaters and sympathizers checked,” said Granger, and Snape sneered, wondering how much of stating the obvious he could bear.  
  
“Do we know how many people received this…. Riddle’s inheritance?” Weasley asked between the bites of his ham and cheese. Granger made a face at him, and the sandwich was Vanished the second after.  
  
“Ichabod Avery confirmed that his father had received an Egyptian bird statuette. It’s Muggle, just very old,” Snape said, trying once again to remember why in all seven circles of hell he had allowed all of this.  
  
“Rookwood?”  
  
“An antique gem. Don’t know if it was charmed.”  
  
“Malfoy?”   
  
Snape shook his head. He was still waiting for a reply from his godson.   
  
“Is there a way to find out if Thorfinn Rowle and Gibbon’s widow were included in Voldemort’s will?” Granger asked, looking up from her notes.  
  
“You tell me, you’re a Ministry rat with connections,” Snape answered in a disgustingly dulcet tone.  
  
“Your choice of wording is severely lacking for a Hogwarts staff member, but the idea is sound, Professor.” She looked at him with a merry sparkle in her eyes. “Ron, do you think we can get Percy to call in a few favours?”  
  
“I hope he has a favour to call in with Vector’s brother. He devised the damn filing and mailing system,” Severus noted.  
  
“Consider it done.”  
  
“There’s something else that bothers me about all of this,” Granger said, and Snape felt the familiar tension. “All these deaths… and Malfoy going down with the Black Leprosy. There’s something… fatally ironic about them.”  
  
Severus felt like something was doing cartwheels inside of him. He hadn’t told Potter about  _Ars Fatorum_  when he’d relayed his sordid tale.  
  
“What do you mean, Hermione?” Potter asked, visibly alarmed.  
  
“Well, think about it. Avery has an endearing little hobby of breeding ravens. He is heard saying that his ravens are the only creatures that would never betray him. Then he faints in his raven loft, and his precious pets feed on him for a week before he’s found. Dead. Rookwood is Tom Riddle’s former classmate and perhaps even a school friend. He was a gangly sort in his teens, so his schoolmates called him plimpy – Tom having coined the nickname. Now he is turning into one, which means imminent death, as plimpies can’t grow larger than a foot long, otherwise their internal organs will be crushed under their own weight due to their morphological peculiarities. Malfoy… didn’t they once have a spread in  _Witch Weekly_  about the magic and beauty specialists he frequents?” At that bit Granger's cheeks and the tips of her ears went red, as if reading  _Witch Weekly_  was a crime of unspeakable idiocy. “And now he’s contracted a horribly disfiguring fatal disease which doesn’t even occur naturally any longer? And I’m sure there has to be something ironic about… choking on a sip of wine one was granted in Azkaban as a reward for a year of model behavior.”  
  
“Imelda Gibbon’s death may have been an accident. I mean, when you’re a toad Animagus and you decide to take a turn at the lake where storks are nesting, you’re asking for it,” Potter said.  
  
“Not when you become an Animagus out of nowhere, are approaching fifty, and it has been your life-long dream and obsession,” Snape said, thinking that if that was the Gryffindor idea of brainstorming, he should have stuck with Flitwick. At least Filius only came in when he had new ideas.   
  
“How do you even know?” Weasley asked. “I bet you’d barely seen Imelda Gibbon.”  
  
“I was a spy. And I’d learned soon enough that world treats you differently when you are privy to certain things. Things like information. Knowing was my job, Mr. Weasley, and you would do well to make it yours.” Snape felt horribly hypocritical saying it, considering that he had quit the ‘knowing job’ when it came to Death Eaters and Voldemort as soon as the war was over.  
  
Weasley gave a kindly chuckle.  
  
“Knowing is Hermione’s job among us three. Always has been.”   
  
“Let’s get back on track. The trend is clear. It’s like Fate itself was put to play a joke with all these… people.”  
  
Snape held still and swayed between keeping mum and feigning disinterest, and sharing Flitwick’s thoughts about _Ars Fatorum_.   
  
“Wouldn’t it be very much like Voldemort to cut deepest where it hurts most?” Potter said as if he just thought out loud.  
  
An eerie silence hung about the room as three pairs of eyes turned to Snape. He didn’t need to be a Legilimens to get a very distinct idea about what was going on in the minds of all four of them. Where would it hurt him most? Where would Voldemort cut him deepest?  
  
The most obvious answer seemed safe enough. Snape didn’t have anything or anyone left to hurt. Not a single soul close enough. However, the sharp, tugging feeling of vulnerability that was clawing at his insides suggested that this sense of safety was false. Voldemort must have seen something. He wouldn’t have been who he had been otherwise.   
  
“Have any of you heard of  _Ars Fatorum_?” Snape asked in a hollow voice.   
  
“Arse what?” Weasley started saying, to be intercepted by Granger’s glare and a hiss of “Ron!”  
  
“Fatecraft. Spells that turn one’s destiny.”  
  
“No, I’m afraid we haven’t, Professor,” Granger said with an air of wounded dignity.  
  
“Don’t take it personally,” Snape answered with a sneer and proceeded to enlighten the hapless Gryffindors. At least this was something he’d always felt comfortable with.   
  
“So, what makes you think those were Fatecraft spells?” Potter asked after Severus finished his impromptu lesson in Charms.  
  
“Nothing, as it is. Nothing, except for the fact that they are untraceable to the point where the only proof of their existence is a few recorded instances of their actually working.”  
  
“Why consider them at all, then?” Weasley asked.  
  
“It probably makes it all the more possible that Tom Riddle had found the way around the chance issue,” Hermione Granger said, all the while scribbling furiously.  
  
“It’s a gut feeling, right?” Potter chimed in suddenly, looking Snape directly in the eye.  
  
Severus remained silent. He had no other explanation for all the whys of being unable to drop the possibility of Fatecraft.   
  
“I’ll look into it,” Granger said with the familiar enthusiasm of a devoted researcher in her voice. That, Snape could relate to.  
  
“I already have,” he said with an almost sympathetic sigh. “But, by all means, have at it.”  
  
“It might just take a fresh eye to grasp at the clue.”  
  
There it was again, the shining puerile hope of youth. Snape felt it flutter through his being like an uncommon species of daytime butterfly, suddenly taking wing during a moonless night.   
  
“Indeed,” he said, quietly.   
  
“There’s one more important problem to tackle, before we finish for the night,” Potter said, looking out of the window, as if he were turning away from an embarrassing scene.   
  
Severus felt like a magical frog under the knife of a fourth-year, ready to be opened up to display all his innards and the workings of magical flow.   
  
There was a pregnant pause, as if everyone knew how inappropriate the wording of ‘tackle the problem’ was.  
  
“You said you don’t feel any different, Professor,” Granger broke the silence awkwardly. “Have you, perhaps, taken your vitals? Blood pressure, pulse rate? Weight, height, sugar levels?”  
  
Shame rushed over Snape like a sobering bucket of cold water. Of course. He was such a paranoid idiot.  
  
“I haven’t,” he answered in a manner too reminiscent of an errant schoolboy who hadn’t turned in his homework.  
  
“I think you might want to,” Granger said in a manner that made Snape immediately think that one day she could give Minerva a run for her money.  
  
“It won’t be informative, unless there are drastic deviations from the norm.”  
  
“Why is that?”  
  
“I haven’t taken any medical stats in a while.”  
  
“Doesn’t matter. It’s still a start,” Weasley said. “You said Harry noticed you looked different. Harry?”  
  
Potter jumped up from his chair and placed a cup of tea on the table with a nervous bang.  
  
“I really don’t know. I swear, there was something… it’s like I saw it from the corner of my eye, but now that I’m trying to put a finger on it, I can’t.”  
  
Potter paced and ran his hand through his hair, making it stick out in all directions. The gesture was, by now, familiar, and Snape, moved by his recently acquired habit of cataloguing familiar things, holding on to them and making them part of his routine, took the opportunity to examine the details. This was a decidedly James-like gesture. And yet, Potter managed to make it a bit softer and somehow more resolute at the same time. It was almost… endearing.  
  
“Harry, we can extract your memory of seeing Professor Snape in the morning and ask Professor McGonagall if we can use the Pensieve,” Weasley said and this time received a nod of approval from Granger.  
  
Snape wondered randomly if these two were an item.  


 

*****

  
The outside patrol duty had long ago become one of his favourites. There was a kind of leisurely peace to it, and the chances of meeting rampant deviant schoolchildren on the loose approached zero. Especially in this kind of weather and after hours. Specifically after the Hogwarts wards had been renewed during the reconstruction. The outside patrol duty had evolved from a dangerous task to a coveted diversion that was wagered on, granted in exchange for favours, and anticipated.  
  
The sky cleared up during the day, but as evening fell, ominous clouds smothered it, and gusts of fierce, crisp wind presaged a heavy rainfall.   
  
Snape walked, dipping in and out of the dark shadows under the eaves of the Forbidden Forest, checking the familiar landmarks of his route. He dropped a piece of bacon on a flat branch overlooking a hollow in a large oak, which housed an eagle-owl’s nest, stopped for a precise forty-five seconds to watch the Giant Squid frolicking in the distance, and headed back to the castle. All clear, and nothing to report, just like it had been most times for the year.  
  
He walked in just as the first raindrops touched the hem of his robes to hear the clock in the Great hall finish chiming midnight. Which was odd. Usually, he returned just a minute and a half before, just in time to watch the House Hour Glasses turn and reset for the new day (and maybe make a few small adjustments, if his whimsy found it pertinent).  
  
Severus cast a Tempus spell: precisely one minute past midnight. How strange. His timing had always been perfect; his ‘inner clock’, as he called it, was infallible. A slimy little tendril of thought that had yet to be put to words started slithering in the back of his head, but never made it; he was interrupted by a voice calling out his name.  
  
He turned back to see Potter standing in the entrance. He looked drenched already. Backlit by the occasional flash of lightning, he looked like one of the misunderstood superheroes from Muggle comic books Severus used to steal from his Muggle neighbour’s mail when he had been a child. Couldn’t those highest-order Gryffindors remember such simple mundane things as rain-repelling Charms when they were out on one noble mission or another?”  
  
“Potter. You look…”  
  
“Like a gormless idiot, I know.” Potter’s mouth stretched in a lop-sided smile. “I was looking for you out there. Min… Professor McGonagall said the grounds patrol was yours for the night.”  
  
“I was going to say ‘drenched’, actually,” Snape said levelly and took a second to enjoy the look of confusion flash across Potter’s face. “Is there a reason you chased after me in the downpour, or was it just a protest against the use of waterproof Charms?”  
  
Potter ruffled his hair, causing a cascade of raindrops to splash on the floor. Severus felt as if half his insides had Apparated away.  
  
“Well?” he asked in a husky voice.  
  
“I know it will sound crazy,” Potter said, as a flash from a bolt of lightning outside reflected in his glasses, which were sitting slightly askew on his nose, and illuminated his face in angles and lines. “I’ve been staring at the Pensieve memory all evening. So was Hermione. We checked every detail, every angle. I’ve been watching you lately, you know?” Potter heaved a heavy sigh, and Snape thought that he’d probably been running. “I may sound like a crazy stalker, but I don’t care, honestly. You weren’t counting steps, I think, but you did touch that suit of armour, like you always do.”  
  
Snape’s anticipation was drawn out and taut like a bowstring. He was on the verge of something, of some grander picture which would only unfold once he reached the turning point in the path, and he was crawling there on boneless legs.  
  
“And then I saw it.” Potter came closer. His spectacles were fogged up and covered in drops of water, so he took them off and wiped each round lens on a crumbled, grayish handkerchief with H and P embroidered clumsily in the corner. For an insane moment, he looked so frankly fragile that it angered Snape to be so touched.   
  
“I don’t know how, and I don’t know why, I don’t even know if it makes sense, but I think that Voldemort had somehow found a way to diminish you. I mean, literally. You are getting smaller, Professor Snape,” Potter said raspingly.   
  
 _You are but a small, tiny man, Severus Snape, but I can raise you to heights unfathomable now that you are with me._  
  
Tom Riddle’s words ran circles in Snape’s head, causing little short circuits each time yet another small detail clicked into its place in the puzzle: gritty metal under his fingers as he touched the suit of armor just below his regular spot; Hogwarts clocks chiming twelve when he had thought he’d still had almost two minutes left; him standing in the hallway just off the entrance to the Great Hall, having counted his three hundred and sixty-six steps, which had left him two steps behind his finishing benchmark.   
  
 _But a small, tiny man_  
  
Snape’s life was tumbling down around his ears. With an incredible effort of will he brought his own consciousness to heel, turned around and walked to the dungeons, feeling no ground under his feet.  


 

*****

  
Snape didn’t even have it in him to protest when Harry Potter slipped into his private rooms behind him without so much as a hint of an invitation, dripping water on Snape’s carpet.  
  
“My sofa will not survive your damp onslaught, I’m afraid,” Snape intoned, as he went about putting away his cloak.   
  
Potter seemed to have expected to be kicked out, because he’d obviously never thought beyond what he’d say to Snape’s lack of hospitality. Now he was at a loss for words. His sudden confusion was palpable and a sight to see. Severus tried to take his edge off by enjoying it, as he was used to, and found that he couldn’t.  
  
“Is there anything else?” he asked in a flat voice, busying his hands with tea.  
  
“No, I guess not. I just wanted…” His face suddenly took on sterner angles which seemed to Snape almost paternal. “If you need someone to talk to, that is…”  
  
“You’ll be the first person I run to, if I ever need a shoulder to cry on,” Snape interrupted, not altogether unkindly.   
  
Potter snorted, and his face softened, and there was that hand-in-hair gesture again. Severus allowed himself the luxury of a small smile. That is to say, his mouth twitched a little.  
  
“I’d love to live long enough to see the day. It’ll probably be the same day when pigs fly and whores ride unicorns,” Potter said, his eyes discomfortingly warm, and added, before turning to leave, “I’m not giving up on you, you know? No matter how many roadblocks you put in my path.”  
  
To his utter surprise, Snape felt an alien, discomfiting heat somewhere behind his heart. It wasn’t all that bad to be on the receiving end of such devoted, frank conviction. Not bad at all.  
  
Just as Potter took hold of the door handle, Snape said in a whisper, “Thank you.”  
  
And Harry Potter had enough sense not to turn around to display his glorious winning smile.  


 

*****

  
“You are just under six foot tall, by less than half an inch, Professor,” Hermione Granger declared, all businesslike, with a quill sticking out of her hair and an ink blotch on the tip of her nose, as she was sifting through a stack of parchment. A small blizzard of blue numbers swirled in the air around Snape, all coming from his previous medical records, which he turned out to have in abundance if he’d only cared to look in the hospital wing.   
  
“You were measured at five foot ten during your seventh year and six foot capped with half an inch two years ago, during one of your… hospital stays. If we take the day you received Voldemort’s inheritance for the starting point, you’re losing about an inch a week, which would take you down to an inch in height in a little over a year. Beyond that… impossible to predict,” Granger said in a slightly wavering voice. “It will be mere weeks or less before behind-the-hand comments start, too. That is, if the rate is linear, which can’t be stated as fact, since we only have two measuring points so far.”   
  
“I can do my own math, thank you very much,” Snape uttered only half as snidely as he meant to.  
  
Granger waved his gibe aside, for which he’d given Gryffindor five points mentally.   
  
“We’ve called in a few favours, too. Percy Weasley looked into the Magical Wills archive. Tom Riddle had indeed set up a number of… items to be delivered to quite a few people in case of his death. Some of them, upon the conditions of the settlements, vanished when the people they were intended for died. Others have all gone out. Every Death Eater with a Dark Mark was on the list, and some of those who sympathized with Tom Riddle’s cause but hadn’t taken the Mark.”  
  
Snape raised his eyebrows and nodded in silent approval. That was a neat bit of homework.  
  
“That’s not all of it,” Ron Weasley said somberly.   
  
“Not all of it?” Severus echoed.  
  
“My name was also on the list,” Potter said, and his voice held a pinch of wondrous, almost joyful desperation, which made Snape curious as to whether he was actually happy to have a valid reason to stick around now.  
  
“And you didn’t mention receiving a piece of unsolicited ‘something to remember Him by’ from beyond the grave?” Snape asked, feeling a rise of anger wash over him.  
  
“I didn’t receive anything. Whatever Voldemort intended to send to me was self-vanished the moment I… the moment I died in the Forbidden Forest.”  
  
Snape’s anger was dampened with an infusion of unwelcome shame.   
  
“So, you are luckily exempt from the Dark Lord’s legacy?”  
  
Potter gave a small, bitter chuckle.  
  
“Probably not.”   
  
“Probably not?”   
  
Severus felt as if he was in a boat without oars or rudder, sliding across dark waters towards an iceberg that seemed threatening enough as it was seen, and had just realized that it was merely the tip he was seeing, while the body—a giant, ruthless chunk of ice—was still hiding in the bowels of the ocean, and there was no escape.  
  
“I hope you forgive us, Professor, for having brought a few extra people to the cause,” Ronald Weasley said with good humour, but without a single note of actual apology in his voice.  
  
The door to the abandoned classroom opened to let in Filius Flitwick and Bill Weasley. The Charms professor looked enthused, and Bill Weasley emanated slightly subdued hostility. That Snape could live with.  
  
Nods of greeting were exchanged; a sprout of annoyance Severus experienced at learning that the two new additions to his savior team had been already fully updated was stemmed at the root before it blossomed; more tea was catered.  
  
“I have reason to believe that whatever spells were cast on Harry, you, Snape, and the rest of your Death Eating bunch,” Bill Weasley said with badly hidden derision, “they weren’t attached to your parcels. Even if it is some kind of undetectable Fatecraft magic we’re dealing with, the inheritance system is autonomous. And completely Muggle – which is to say, magic-less – in its core. His spells might have been untraceable, but his act of casting them wouldn’t. Goblins wouldn’t have it. Not from anyone. Besides, he didn’t really have to go to such pains, come to think of it.”   
  
Why hadn’t it occurred to him before? Of course. Voldemort might have been given to fantastic leaps of illogic and paranoia in his last years, but he was nothing if not extremely crafty when it came to things like vengeance. Making his spells time-delayed was much easier than hassling with the goblins.  
  
“It makes perfect sense,” he said through clenched teeth, furious with himself for being so incredibly hare-brained. “It doesn’t negate the idea of  _Ars Fatorum_  completely though, because I’ve run through every possible magic detection spell there is and some there aren’t; there’s nothing on my person that I’m not aware of casting.”  
  
“True,” Potter said. “That’s why we need to see an expert in fates and destiny.”  
  
“Good gods,” Severus said with mock horror, “Don’t tell me my fate lies in the sherry-smelling, shaking hands of that barking lunatic Trelawney.”  
  
“Gods, no. But you and I are going to the Forest to see Firenze.”  
  
At that moment, a wave of forceful rejection rose inside him, as if that boat that carried him towards the impending mountain of ice waiting to crush his life had oars, but in fact, was steered and rowed by everyone and anyone but him. The vision was so clear, he had to shake his head to shoo it away. The need to take matters into his own hands burned hot in him.  
  
“No. First I am going to Malfoy Manor,” he said with steel in his voice, and then added as an offer of detente, “You can join me, if you want to."  


 

*****

  
The Manor was just as he’d remembered it. Unlike other dwellings, it seemed to be impervious to the assault of time, untainted by the political inclinations of its masters, of whom there had been many throughout the centuries. Many and quite popular. It instilled the enchanting feeling of beauty and unrestrained grandeur, no matter whether it housed a Dark Revel, crawling with horrid creatures or entertained the uppercrust of Muggle society in a baroque dancing reception, adorned with flowing wine and flower-holding cupids.   
  
Today it looked like it was holding its breath, not a wisp of wind in the fastidiously shaped treetops, the air of hesitant anticipation swaying all around, engulfing the guests in tepid, detached welcome.   
  
“We are here to see your master,” Severus told the elderly house-elf that came out to meet him and Harry Potter at the gates. “I have owled him a few times about urgent business and received no reply.”  
  
“Master Draco says he not receiving anyone,” the elf squeaked and plucked at his ears, torn and jagged from years of similar treatment.   
  
“The hell he is not. Step aside.”  
  
“No, please, sir, Master Snape, sir,” the elf whined, yanking and tugging at Snape’s robe. “Moe will iron his ears, he will, Moe promises, but Master…”  
  
Snape shoved the creature aside and started for the main house, only to be thrown flat on his back by a wall of sheer magic. The air was knocked out of his lungs, and for a few moments the world swam in blackness around him. He regained consciousness to see Potter crooning to Moe, who was wailing up a storm and dragging his long, unkempt nails through the shabby remains of his miserable ears.  
  
“Moe, your master may be sick or in danger. We are here to help him, if possible; we mean no harm, please let us in,” Potter cooed, clumsily petting the elf on his wrinkly bald head.   
  
The elf wept with even more frantic despair and waved a shaking hand in abject acceptance.   
  
Snape hurried towards the Manor house, a growing pit of gnawing fear in his stomach and Potter trotting by his side.  


 

*****

  
However, nothing could have prepared him for the grotesque and horrifying sight that awaited them in the master bedroom.   
  
The first thing to practically jump into their vision was a scattering of chunks of gold at the entrance. Some of them were shaped like…food. Potter swallowed uncomfortably and swore.   
  
“Let’s go in,” he whispered, and pushed open the heavy, magnificent door with snakes coiling on the wooden surface.  
  
Inside was light. Too much light. Gleaming and glowing streaks of light reflected a thousand times off every surface, crowding the sight to the point of near blindness. With a shouted spell, Severus magicked the windows shut and only then realized that practically everything in the room was made of gold. Magical, polished gold of the highest quality, from the look of it. And there, in the middle of a golden bed on sheets of solid spun gold, curled into a ball lay Draco Malfoy – naked and jaundiced and so gaunt, Snape could count every rib and vertebra. To his assessing eye, his godson was staring Death in the empty eye-sockets.  
  
“Motherfucker,” Potter uttered, letting his jaw drop, and Severus hitched a painful breath.  
  
The creature on the golden bed stirred. Draco’s face, when he lifted it to see who’d disturbed him, resembled a bony mask. His skin was papery-white, taut and parched. The bluish hollows of his cheeks, soaked in golden light, took on a ghostly look; his eyes were bleary and red-rimmed.   
  
“Godfather. Why are you here?” Draco croaked and coughed – a ghastly, barking sound that made Snape’s skin crawl.   
  
“I would think the answer is plainly obvious.”  
  
“Pretend I’m slow.”   
  
“We’re here to help,” Potter said, and Snape felt embarrassed by his blatant idealism yet oddly protective towards him when Draco gave him his patented stare of disdain.   
  
“Help? I’m beyond help.” It looked like every word brought pain to him.  
  
Snape took a step towards the hideous golden bed, and Draco recoiled like a caged animal.  
  
“Don’t come any closer!” he wheezed, skeletal hands shaking.  
  
“When did this happen?” Severus asked softly, hoping to Nimue and Merlin and whoever else was watching that Potter didn’t do or say any Gryffindorism and cock it up.   
  
“Almost a month ago, Uncle. I received an inheritance. You know how I like little expensive trinkets that don’t require a gift in return. Voldemort deemed me worthy of mentioning in his will. The jar’s over there, on the coffee table.”  
  
Snape shifted his gaze to a huge golden jar, ornate and besprent with a multitude of roughly faceted precious gems. The monstrosity must have weighed a ton, had over a thousand years of history in its spacious basin, and cost a fortune.   
  
“Imagine how happy I was. Not for long though. The dead fucker gave me some kind of a curse. I’m a fucking King Midas now!” Draco cackled and croaked for a minute before Snape realized that he was actually laughing. “Everything I touch turns to gold! The food I put in my mouth turns to gold. I was spared the water, though. Some of it. He didn’t want me to die without fully enjoying my predicament. So twice a day, I can drink from  _that_  jar. I piss gold. I shit gold. I fucking sweat gold! If I stuck my cock in a whore, her cunt would turn gold! Can you imagine? A whore with a golden cunt. Some Knockturn Alley scumbags would give their firstborn for this!”   
  
Draco’s words were turning into shrill, grating hysterics, and upon a closer look, Snape saw with a deafening dread that where he’d thought the golden glow of the bed reflected on the marked pallor of Draco’s skin, he was actually covered in a flimsy sheen of gold.   
  
Snape felt a disgusted, slimy shiver pass through him and turned to look at Potter, as if he was the last vestige of normalcy in this fucked-up room.   
  
“Why don’t you end it?” Potter whispered, his face a contortion of horror and sympathy.   
  
“End it? End it?” Draco’s voice pitched higher still, and he started shaking all over. “I love life! I love living!” Bits of spittle came out of his mouth, and Severus watched, mesmerized, how they turned into gold in the air, and was horrified that he could be mesmerized by something so terrible. “And because… because I can’t, that’s fucking why. I tried a few times… nothing happens. I suppose Voldemort’s dying wish was for me to die this way and no other.”   
  
Draco’s shakes were becoming more and more violent, and Snape noticed with a satisfaction he didn’t care to take a good look at that Potter cast a discreet Warming Charm on the room.   
  
“Why didn’t you come earlier? Why didn’t you?” Draco screamed at him.   
  
“I didn’t know. I kept writing to you. You never answered.”  
  
“I couldn’t!” Draco bellowed and then coughed, doubling over on the bed and pawing at his stomach. Good Lord, he was dying of hunger, Snape thought. Starving to death, surrounded by all the gold in the world.  
  
“You could have sent an elf, you bungling idiot.”  
  
The look in Draco’s half-mad eyes spoke volumes. Malfoys did not send elves to beg for help.   
  
“You aren’t alone in this, you know,” Potter said with a crack in his voice.  
  
“I know. My father’s got a gift, too. And now he’s rotting inside and out.”  
  
“Not just him,” Potter went on, despite Snape’s warning glare.  
  
That seemed to calm Draco slightly. “Who else?”  
  
“All of the Death Eaters who outlived Voldemort. Rookwood’s turning into a plimpy. Avery was eaten by his pet ravens. A few others.”  
  
An ugly smile split Draco’s jaundiced face in half. “And you, Uncle? What are you turning into? A giant bat?”  
  
“Not just him!” Potter stepped forward, balling hands into fists, and Snape pinched his brow. “I’m under it too, and Snape’s… Snape’s getting smaller.”  
  
A gurgling, belching sound that came out of Draco’s mouth was as much a laugh as a basilisk was a pet.   
  
Potter pressed his lips tight and looked at Snape with that Gryffindorish ‘I-was-trying-to-protect-you’ look.  
  
“Oh, Merlin, that’s hilarious” Draco managed between pants. “But that man was a fucking genius.”   
  
After a while, his laughter mingled with weeping, and then both Severus and Potter at his side watched, transfixed, as Malfoy’s eyes shed little golden drops which rolled down his cheeks and bounced off the hard surface of the bed. There was a kind of eerie, deathly perfection to the whole picture.  
  
Suddenly, Draco looked up and peered at Snape as if he was looking at something spun by the dawn. His eyes shone with a deranged hope.  
  
“You’ll fix me, right? You’ll fix me, Uncle Severus! Of course you will. But hurry, I don’t have much time left!”  
  
And then Snape remembered the little cherub-like boy he had taught to ride a broom. How he had laughed, doing his first full circle around the picnic lawn. Like a little silver bell.  
  
He rushed up to his godson, but Draco crawled away frantically.  
  
“No, no don’t touch me! You’ll turn to gold too! Astoria… my sweet, beautiful Astoria. I just wanted to hug her one last time before I sent her away and…”  
  
Bile rose to Severus’ mouth, and he made a hard swallow.   
  
“I can’t promise anything, Draco,” Severus said after he’d composed himself a little. “I’m not sure we will be able to lift those curses in time for… I’m not even sure they can be reversed at all.”  
  
“I see,” Draco whispered with a small, somehow dignified smile, the last of his sanity shining through the madness. “You should go then. Do what you can, Uncle. And please take care of Mum.”  
  
“I will,” Snape could but answer, feeling the hollowness of yet one more promise he wasn’t destined to fulfill settle in his heart. He pulled out a wand and pointed it at Draco. “Do you want me to… It will be painless.”  
  
“No. But thank you. I still have hope. Besides, it will probably rebound and since you can’t die, you’ll end up with a scar on your head, just like Potter’s. What a fine pair you’d make.” Draco cackled and coughed, his face warped beyond recognition by madness and the curse.  
  
Outside, the wind shifted, and even through the closed windows Severus sensed the first tidings of rain and then heard the far rumbling of thunder.  
  
When they stepped out of the accursed house and into the torrential downpour, it felt as if they climbed out of a dark cave into the living sunlight.  


 

*****

  
Severus had scoured himself clean for almost two hours in the scalding water, and still could smell the dry, decaying sweetness of Death’s breath that permeated the Manor, as if it had crawled under his skin.  
  
He was nursing a mournful snifter of Firewhiskey when there came a knock on his door.  
  
Somehow, even Potter’s knocks were now familiar – and brought a familiar comfort.   
  
“Astoria Greengrass is in Saint Mungo’s. Curse reversal department. She’d appeared there about three weeks ago, mad with grief. Her lips were gold, and a few splotches on her back. They had to excise the affected tissue, so Hermione says. She’ll be fine after some… new tissue-growing procedures. She is in rather bad shape… mentally. Hasn’t told them anything.”  
  
“Thank you,” was all Snape managed.   
  
“Narcissa Malfoy is not on Bill’s list. Voldemort spared her.”  
  
“Or thought that watching her husband and son die so…” Snape paused, scrambling for an appropriate word and didn’t find any. “He thought it would do her in just as well.”  
  
“Let’s just get pissed,” Potter blurted out and dragged a bottle of Ogden’s from behind his back.  
  
It was puerile. It was the most cowardly and infantile way of dealing with problems imaginable, in Snape’s opinion. It was downright imbecilic, considering that tomorrow at seven in the morning they should be making good time on the road towards the depths of the Forbidden Forest.  
  
It was just what Severus had needed.  


 

*****

  
He woke up to the smell of alcohol and male sweat, to two hippogriffs banging hooves into his temples, and Potter sprawled on the couch in his living room amidst a battery of bottles and snifters. There was Firewhiskey and cheap Muggle Brandy and even a half-finished bottle of Hagrid’s home brew, which would burn the gullet of a lesser wizard.  
  
It was half past seven, and Snape experienced a gloating delight at having defeated his own alarm spell – as if his routine had put shackles on him, and this was the first step to taking them off.  
  
The gloating soon seeped away to let sadness in. It would all be in vain anyway. Snape set up an instant Alarm Spell right next to Potter’s snoring head and heard something about himself being as mean as a bear with a headache before he headed to shower.  
  
Only then it occurred to him that he’d spent the evening and the better half of the night drinking himself to oblivion with none other than James Potter’s son.   
  
A small, maliciously joyful voice in his head reminded him that last night he hadn’t thought about James Potter even once. True, that. Harry Potter was his own person.  
  
Snape got out of the shower to see Potter still stretching on the sofa.  
  
“It’s about time you dragged your arse to the shower, Potter,” he said, tossing him a Hangover Potion. “I could cut the air around you with a knife.”  
  
“Thanks, Snape,” Potter said with a smile that shifted from shy to devious in a split second. “You know the kind of drunk you are?”  
  
Severus fixed Potter with a silent glare.  
  
“Aw, humour me and say, ‘Which one?’ Professor,” Potter said with a laugh and then grabbed his head. “I’m going to tell you anyway. You’re a philosophical drunk.”   
  
“And you’re an idiot, and no amount of drink can help that,” Snape said vehemently, angry at himself for having too much to drink to be able to come up with a more clever comeback.   
  
“It was actually quite endearing, the way you did that soul searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself yesterday,” Potter went on, smiling toothily.   
  
“At least I wasn’t the one telling you what pretty  _sooty_  lashes you have and recounting females who’d die to have them,” Snape retorted. Potter’s eyes gleamed with frank enjoyment and, well,… residual drunkenness.  
  
“Ok, you’ve leveled the field.” Potter laughed and traipsed to the loo, whining about his sore head.  


 

*****

  
The Forest embraced Snape and his extremely hungover companion in shadows, an explosion of smells and thick silence.  
  
“We’d better hurry,” Severus said, looking around for familiar landmarks. “Centaur dwellings are a good ten hours of walking from here. The Forest has never been the best place for a leisurely stroll and during the war all sorts of things found shelter here. Besides, Anti-Apparition charms are still in place.”  
  
“You sound like you’re trying to scare a first-year into submission,” Harry answered and picked up the pace.  
  
“You sound more impertinent by the minute.”  
  
The light of the Hogwarts clearing faded behind them and they were engulfed in twilight.   
  
For an hour or so they walked in complete silence.  
  
“I feel like I’m being watched by a dozen pairs of eyes belonging to a dozen kinds of monsters,” Potter muttered finally.  
  
So, the feeling got to him, too.  
  
“We probably are,” Snape answered. “So tell me. Where’s your ginger sidekick?” he went on in a clumsy attempt to lift Potter’s spirits. He needed him composed, should they run into… an unexpected hindrance.   
  
Potter laughed snappily. “I can tell you’re no social butterfly, Snape. A dragon can boast more tact than you. But to answer your question…” Potter paused and continued, with a dash of bittersweetness in his voice, “You know how oil and water don’t make a good base for a potion? Well, we are oil and water.”  
  
“They do, actually.”   
  
“They do what?” Potter seemed confused.  
  
“I can tell you never got your Potions NEWT. Oil and water make a perfect potions base. If you take a herbal distillate for water and use an emulsifier.”  
  
A sad smile played on Potter’s lips. “Well, I’m not exactly rosewater. And we’ve lost our emulsifier, whatever it is, somewhere along the way.”  
  
Snape decided Potter wasn’t really willing to go into details.  
  
“Not to put too fine a point on it, but you are a droll twerp, Snape,” Potter said after a few seconds, but there was again a twinkle of merriment in his eyes, and Severus let that sail right on past.   
  
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” Harry broke the comfortable silence after another hour of steady walking. “About what Malfoy said.”  
  
Snape’s ears pricked.  
  
“I mean, that he couldn’t… end it.” Potter stopped and looked at Severus with a resolution in his eyes he didn’t like.  
  
“Just exactly what are you hinting at?” Snape asked with a warning.  
  
“You know what I’m hinting at. We can find out for sure if we’re affected by the curse or not. Right here, right now.”  
  
“You are an insane cretin with a death wish, Potter,” Snape said with a bit of awe he had difficulty hiding. It was a brilliant idea in a completely fucked-up way.  
  
An understanding smile tugged at Harry’s mouth. “I’ll cut my wrist if I can, and you’ll heal me if I’m able to.”  
  
“No. This is idiocy. We’re getting to the centaurs first,” Snape spat out and reached for his wand. He’d stun the little twat if he had to.  
  
It all happened very fast. There was a crack in the undergrowth just behind where Snape was standing. He turned to look at the possible danger, wand in hand, and went numb with terror when he simultaneously spotted a large, dirty-white ape-like furry shape in the bushes and felt a few wet splotches hit his cheek. He inhaled deeply, and there was a metallic tang on the back of his tongue.   
  
Somewhere behind, Potter uttered, “Oh, fuck me sideways.”  
  
Aiming his wand overhead, Snape shouted, “ _Diffindo_!” silently thanking Merlin they were under the canopy of a huge oak.   
  
A barrage of tree branches fell in front of them, but Snape knew that wasn’t going to hinder the thing in the bushes. He whipped around to see Potter standing still; his wand arm was covered with blood.  
  
“Run!” Severus bellowed, and Harry rushed off, screaming “The hell is this thing?”  
  
“It’s a Yeti! As dumb as a stump and just as magic-resistant,” Severus yelled back, punctuating his words with pants and long strides. The Yeti was thumping just behind with all the inevitability of five hundred pounds of rage and pure muscle.   
  
“We won’t outrun it, Potter!” Snape shouted, seeing the way Potter started lagging. “Give me your arm!”   
  
Without stopping, he cast a hasty Blood-staunching spell on a deep gash on Potter’s forearm, dripping blood everywhere, and thought that would have to do for now.   
  
“On the count of three… you take left and I take right. Run for at least five minutes. Then send your Patronus,” Snape rasped, counted, “One… Two… Three!” and willed the crushing ape behind to take after him. It did. Now that bloody Potter with his literally bloody hand was in relative safety, Snape hurled an array of spells about himself, summoning boulders and rocks, felling trees and setting small fires. The beast was hellishly strong and just as stubborn in its pursuit. The few precious moments Severus had won when he and Harry had split were running thin.   
  
Just when he thought he could smell the foul breath at his back there was a loud bang, the ground failed under his feet, the world swam at the edges and everything went black.  


 

*****

  
He teetered on the sharp edge between being unconscious and awake for an unusually long time. The world smelled of spring and fresh foliage, gently swirling leaves caught the sunlight and swirled it around like myriads of jewels. He was warm and light and floating. If this was the afterlife, he was very much liking it. Severus tried to will the delightful picture into focus, but failed.   
  
As his reality reasserted itself, he discovered that the flashes of warm light came from a merrily crackling fire, the leaves were those of early fall and the sky above him was clear and starlit.   
  
His head was resting comfortably, and he turned to see Potter. He fussed about the fire, sending scatters of tiny embers up into the night. A turning gust of wind brought a faint smell of horse; the inside of his mouth tasted like Strengthening Solution.  
  
“And here I thought I’d be the one healing you and pouring potions down your gob,” Snape muttered and rolled his eyes.  
  
“Oh, you’re awake! Hey, meet Karita. A lovely little centaur lady that helped me to save your herb-smelling hide,” Potter said with a good deal of humour. “And my own stupid arse, too.”  
  
Karita stepped out of the bushes. She was a gangly teenager with deep-set, cautious eyes and a mane of unruly hair. In a way that Snape found hilariously irrelevant, she reminded him of a centaur version of Hermione Granger.  
  
“Now all we need is a ginger adolescent on four hooves and you’ll be all set,” he said and couldn’t hold back a chuckle.  
  
Potter looked at him with sympathy in his eyes and turned to Karita.  
  
“You’re right. He’s concussed.”  
  
“What happened to the Yeti, and how far are we from the centaur village?”  
  
“Oh, you’re going to love it!” Potter said, as enthused as if he were about to share his latest Quidditch feat with a clique of doting Gryffindor underclassmen. “It went after you like a shark after a harbour seal. I thought you were a lost cause and then I remembered there was a barrel of gasoline in the basement of Sirius’s house, so I conjured it and blew it up. That knocked the baboon down, but only for a little while. When he was about to get you, he just… I don’t know, it was as if the tree roots came at him and the earth itself was holding it, and I guess my little fireworks show blinded the huge bugger, so it just… gave up on you. What Draco said about… it worked.”  
  
“It was Fate.” Karita finally decided to make Snape aware of the fact that she had a voice. A young, husky, slightly accented voice. “I’m going back to my people. It is wise to let them know you are coming by Fate beforehand. Safer for you two silly humans, too.”   
  
With that, she took off, swift and light-footed.  
  
“Merlin, but I hate the word. And the notion,” Severus said with a moan.   
  
“She’s a nice centaur. I think she helped us because of this Fatespell. Somehow they sense it,” Potter said, and his voice took on a mysterious cadence.   
  
“Of course they do. That’s what centaurs are all about. How far away are we?”  
  
“Oh, not far at all. Karita helped me to bring you here. She said you were a mere bag of bones and not heavy at all to carry. So now you can boast you’ve ridden a centaur.”  
  
Snape rolled his eyes yet again. “An adolescent filly and unconscious.”   
  
“Arse up, too,” Potter said, unable to hide his sheer amusement. Snape was too beat to pick on that. Then he remembered Potter’s half-cocked idea to use a suicide attempt as a litmus for curses.   
  
“How’s your arm, you custard-brained epitome of all things dimwitted?”   
  
Potter’s face creased in adorable Gryffindor shame, which often got the buggers out of trouble with many a sentimental teacher. Never Severus Snape though.  
  
“I’m sorry. I really was an arse-hopper. And we learned fuck all. I still have no clue whether I’m cursed or not.”  
  
“Show me,” Snape said, managing to make a half-whisper sound commanding.  
  
Harry rolled up his sleeve and stretched out his maimed arm.   
  
The wound looked painful. After a moment of uncomfortable hesitation, Snape placed the tip of his thumb on the taut, pink skin of the fresh scar and rubbed it. The skin was soft and raised and jagged.   
  
“I can’t tell whether it was healed by my spell,” he whispered, and went on, without thinking, “There are potions to help with a neater scarring when we get back.” As his words registered in his addled head, he cursed himself, and then it also hit him that he’d been holding Potter’s arm for a much longer time than could have been blamed on therapeutic intentions. Severus jerked his hand away as if recoiling from a snake. He could swear Potter wasn’t above pouting just then.   
  
“Thank you. For saving my life, too,” Potter whispered, and renewed the cushioning charm under Snape. “Karita says we’re safe here. We should rest for the night. A big day tomorrow. Here. I’ve made some soup. It’s just pot noodles, but I can’t cook to save my life otherwise.”  
  
Pot noodles was something Snape remembered from the days of undisturbed childhood. Back from when the sunlight was golden as it caught in the tree leaves and every day smelled of spring.   
  
“I can do with pot noodles,” he said, taking a steaming paper cup from Harry’s hands.  


 

*****

  
Severus woke up to the quiet, still dampness of morning. The forest was drowsing in a dense mist and cold, brownish colours. A bed of fallen leaves, covered with a sheen of dew, reflected the sparse, muffled sunlight. Severus felt slightly shivery. Perhaps a small fever, just enough to make him tender-skinned. He stretched and turned to see Potter sleeping a foot away from him, glasses folded neatly next to the Transfigured sleeping bag. There was an embarrassing vulnerability about him, which made Snape experience a surge of protectiveness. He castigated himself for being soft-brained, then decided to blame it on concussion and gave Potter another look. There was a kind of ragged, artless charm about him. Then suddenly remembering himself, Severus checked that train of thought and turned away and tried to focus on the dour, dreary weather and their whereabouts.   
  
“I forgot to tell you yesterday…” Potter’s voice was thick with sleep. “I found a whole batch of late bluebells just a few dozen yards to the southwest of here. Heard they were rare. You know how Hermione always blathers on about things like that. Thought maybe you could use them for your Potions.”  
  
Snape felt a tug in his chest. As if something were leading him by the heart to a dangerous precipice. The closer he approached, the more unsure his footing became.   
  
“Bluebells are useless this time of year,” he lied, a gritty edge to his voice.   
  
A scanty breakfast passed in silence, and when Snape was packing his gear and checking the small field potions kit, Karita shuffled out of the forest.  
  
“My people are expecting you. I hope you brought gifts.” Her slanted eyes gleamed with wicked amusement and she galloped ahead.  
  
“Gifts? I only have a Gryffindor scarf and a bead bracelet Teddy Lupin made me.” Potter looked at him like he’d just grown two apple-cheeks and a beard and was about to say ‘ho-ho-ho’ and share the contents of his backpack, full of incredible presents.  
  
“She’s shitting you,” Snape said. “Gifts are only accepted from official friends of the herd. Anyone associated with Hogwarts and the last Wizarding war has leagues to go before even hitting the boundaries of being anywhere close to friendship with centaurs.”  
  
“Are you sure we’ll pull this off?”   
  
“You don’t have to pull anything off. Chances are, you aren’t even under the curse.”  
  
Potter stopped stone-still and then shook his head with a deprecating smile.  
  
“You know, you’d make a shit Gryffindor. Would you please stop causing everyone general misery and just accept that I’m not leaving you alone in this?”  
  
Snape felt a jet of pure fury shoot through his head.  
  
“I do not believe in total altruism, Potter,” he said in a deadly cold voice. “Either you give me at least one thing that’s in it for you, or fuck off before…”   
  
The ambiguous something that lay beyond this ‘before’ enraged Snape beyond reason. These were things that still defied words.  
  
“Hermione says that altruism is the highest form of egoism,” Potter said in a quiet, resolute voice, affront written in every line of his body. His green eyes behind the glasses, sitting slightly uneven on his nose, seemed to be the only specks of colour in this kingdom of grays and browns. “There you have it. If you want something else, you’re…. the last one of them. The last. One. I can’t just… lose you.”  
  
There was something in Potter’s voice that made Severus feel utterly responsible for the boy, though the boy stood almost as tall as him. It made him want to take his hand, hug him even, promise him that everything would be all right in the end.  
  
But he made no move and let the words jump off his lips as if they had a mind of their own. “Last one of whom?”  
  
“Of them. Mum and Dad and Sirius and Remus Lupin and Tonks. Dumbledore. And you’re…” Potter paused and took a shaky breath. “I can’t. I won’t. You’ll just have to deal with it. I’ll latch onto you like a barnacle to a ship.”   
  
Potter took a step closer, and it took all of Snape’s willpower and courage not to turn away. A shade of something new, a promise of things to come was there in the three feet of distance between them, seemingly, and Severus felt that precipice again. This time he was looking right over the edge and waiting for the final push.   
  
“I’ll have your bead bracelet, if you won’t tell I let that crow ride on my back,” Karita’s voice called out from the clearing ahead of them, and the spell was broken.  
  
Potter gave him a sad smile, and left him standing there, light-headed. “That’s two favours for you and none for me, Karita!”  
  
For a small eternity, time stood still, and Severus stood still too, basking in a moment of perfect kinship and understanding, and contemplated that, perhaps, Harry Potter was also the last one of them. The last one of those who gave too much to the war to be able to make a smooth transition and ride into the brave new world they’d saved on the crest of a wave of celebration.   


 

*****

  
When they reached the centaur village, it was pissing down rain. The crowns of giant oaks crouched over a small settlement with a scattering of bark tents, huddled together around an enormous fireplace full of glowing embers. The trees let little water through, but the air was swollen and thick with moisture, and a milky white fog eddied above the hearth. The ground was patterned with hoof prints, but the inhabitants of the village weren’t very forthcoming in their welcome, staying closer to the trees and inside the huts.   
  
At last, a large bay centaur stepped out of the fog. The human part of his body was oiled after centaur custom and shaped like a maiden’s fantasy. His spear was pointing down—a good sign, Snape decided offhandedly—and each time the huge creature took a step, small hollow bones and wooden beads, woven in his luxuriant hair, clicked and jingled.   
  
“He cuts a damn impressive picture, if I do say so,” Potter whispered next to him.  
  
“Centaurs have perfect hearing,” Snape whispered back.  
  
“I am pleased to know I impress you, Harry Potter; and so we meet again,” the centaur said with a regal bow of his head.  
  
“Hello to you, too, Bane,” Potter said, his words accompanied by snickers and a few occasional neighs.   
  
Snape, who was slightly better versed in the art of dealing with centaurs, remained silent and bowed his head.   
  
“What brings two humans in this corner of the forest?” Bane asked.  
  
“We seek counsel from your people,” Severus answered before Potter said something too direct for this courtly dance of words. Harry looked at him with a question in his eyes, and Snape hoped his own were commanding enough to instill a bit of silence into the brat.  
  
“What counsel can my people give you that your own cannot?”  
  
Snape tried his best to look properly humble. “Counsel in the matter of the work of Fates.”  
  
The centaur lifted a skeptical brow, and next to Snape Potter snorted, badly hiding a chuckle. Snape hoped he wasn’t under the curse so he could snap his neck as soon as this was over.  
  
“You need me to tell you what the stars think of your fate, Severus Snape?”  
  
“I will reward your reading with an oak branch.”   
  
Harry Potter stared at him in confusion, but Snape paid him no heed.   
  
“Owing a favour to the herd is a dear price to pay for a reading,” Bane said with a solemn satisfaction.   
  
“I will ask for a favour in return. I must see one of your own, Firenze.”  
  
A low murmur passed through the motley crowd of centaurs that had gathered around them by now. Males carried short spears, and centaur children snickered and hid behind their mothers’ croups.   
  
“A long time has passed since you last heard tidings from the forest people,” Bane said after a pause. “We welcomed our brother back into our herd’s embrace after the war with your Dark Lord was over. He did not stay long with us, seeking himself a home with more… human-loving ways. It has since been heard that he’d gone to the Halls of Dying.”  
  
A sour disappointment settled over Severus. Fate indeed.   
  
“I will do both your readings and take no oak branch. But you will look at my younger son’s hock.”  
  
“It is a deal, then,” Snape said with deep resignation.   
  
It took him half an hour to look at the lad’s leg, during which he was winkled out of most of his potions. He shared them lavishly. The rest of the evening was spent wandering about the village and generally being a show for the foals. Potter tried to find the curious little Karita and ask her whether she knew of Firenze’s whereabouts, but the little filly was as elusive as they come.  
  
When the drowsy treetops swallowed the crimson sun, sending streaks of pinks and golds along the clearing skies, Bane approached his guests.  
  
“It is time we look at the stars for your fates,” he said and led them to the hearth in the middle of the clearing, where a tall, roaring fire was started.  
  
Behind them, the entire herd joined hands and started chanting. The song was sad, and beautiful, and alien, reminding Snape of the void between two peoples. Bane, whose exotic, lilting voice carried above the crowd in the unfamiliar tongue of the centaurs, rolled his eyes to the firmament in characteristic bits of showiness. From the crowd, bundles and wreaths of herbs flew into the fire, causing it to shoot up and dance in multicolour flames. Suddenly, all went still, the fire subdued to glowing coals, and for a singular outstanding moment Severus looked up to the sky and thought he’d never seen so many stars.  
  
“Severus Snape,” Bane’s voice called out, “Your fate is forfeit. Harry Potter. Your fate is fulfilled.”   
  
“That’s it?” Severus heard Potter ask in dismayed disappointment. He gave him his best ‘shut-up-talk-later’ glare and bowed before Bane.  
  
“I thank you, Bane, the chieftain of this herd, reader of stars and listener of planets.”  
  
Bane nodded and raised his hands. The fire roared again, this time warm and demanding, and the centaurs cried out. The ceremony was over. Snape felt empty and spent. Such a pronouncement held absolutely no promise or even elbow room for either of them.  
  
With a sinking heart Snape realized that, up to this moment, he had been too busy (or, truth be told, Potter kept him too busy) to really think about his predicament. And now that the word ‘forfeit’ hung in front of his mind’s eye in fiery letters, the sudden loss of his personal direct future formed a void inside him that grew by the minute.  
  
“When he offers to escort us to Hogwarts, say you’d like to ponder your fate on your way home,” Potter hissed into his ear, taking advantage of the loud roaring around them.   
  
His words sifted through Severus’s hearing like fine sand. Out of the corner of his eye, he listlessly watched how Potter conjured a beautiful stag and sent it to Hogwarts to let his friends know they were safe. He allowed himself to be taken by the hand and led to the fire. He even accepted a bowl of some astringent-smelling drink and had a sip.  
  
Beside him, Potter was chattering on and on about how they’d trumpet the case all over Wizarding England and find Firenze, and that it was going to be ok, ok, ok…  


 

*****

  
“Will you be leaving tonight?” Bane asked, when the celebration was over and his kinsmen started heading towards their dwellings for the night.  
  
“Yes,” Severus answered, and thought that the empty attic at his Spinner’s End house would be embarrassed at how hollow he sounded.  
  
“I will send my nephew Rethimne to guide you home.”  
  
Before Severus managed to even nod, Potter’s elbow sharply connected with his ribs.  
  
“I thank you, Bane, but I would like to ponder your prediction on the way home,” he said automatically.  
  
“If that is your choice.” Bane nodded.   
  
After a ceremonious farewell that took almost fifteen minutes, Snape set out of the village with a strangely shifty Potter by his side.  
  
As soon as they were out of reach of the centaurs’ perfect hearing, Severus confronted him.  
  
“What the hell was that all about? Do enlighten me how I may find my options to save myself extended by taking an aimless stroll in the woods without a guide?”  
  
Soft drizzle pelted the foliage above them. Potter’s glasses were fogged, and his hair stuck out in all directions.  
  
“I don’t know! Karita asked me to refuse the guide. Maybe she…”  
  
A small cough interrupted them, and the sparkle of dissension that was about to catch fire flickered and died.   
  
“Harry Potter!” Karita called out in a clear, melodic voice. “Firenze was my half-sister’s father. He taught me a little of your ways. I want to study at your Hogwarts. I want to learn how to harness magic. Look, I even have a wand!” She produced a thin slightly crooked stick with a small tuft of what looked like unicorn hair at the improvised handle. She pointed it at the nearest bush and swished. The bush sparkled in tiny blue lights. Snape was impressed despite himself.  
  
It was clearly an offer of something. Severus remained silent. He could offer the young filly quite a few things in exchange for whatever she thought was important enough that she’d break about a dozen centaur rules and traditions to share it. And yet, she addressed Potter, which meant, he’d have to do the trading. Severus hoped only that the boy could think of something to offer.  
  
Harry turned to him, a shadow of doubt in his gaze, and Snape did his best to convey how much meaning this conversation actually had.  
  
“I’m afraid you can’t study, I mean… study properly,” he started. Karita’s face fell, and Snape cursed silently. “But listen here. I know this girl… she’s a friend of mine. She’s wicked brilliant! The smartest witch of her age they say. She’s a trainee at the Magical Creatures department at the Ministry. You know the Ministry, right?”  
  
Snape watched, heart twisting with suspense, the way hope lit up in the young centaur’s eyes.  
  
“She will teach you. Only you have to be diligent. She can be a nagging pain in the neck, too. But if she takes you on, you’ll be casting spells in no time. If our Hermione takes to a project, she makes it. And I’m sure some teachers like… like Hagrid… and Snape here… will help you, too.”  
  
Harry spoke with such inspired conviction that even Snape’s spirits lifted. No amount of spite about his imminent involvement, so easily proffered by Potter, could deny it.  
  
“I accept, Harry Potter. Come, I will take you to my Great-grandfather. He’s barking mad, but he knows his things.”  
  
Potter looked at Severus with a triumphant “See now?” in his eyes and followed Karita under the shade of the low-leaning ash trees.   


 

*****

  
Oberon was the oldest centaur Snape had ever seen. In fact, he might have been the oldest living creature he’d ever come across in his life.  
  
He was wrinkled and rail-thin. His once raven-black hide was mottled with gray. His unseeing eyes hid beneath two furry brows that resembled lovely caterpillars and his left hind leg ended in a blackened stump. All in all, Oberon looked like he’d walked out of a book of ancient Greek myths.   
  
“Grandfather,” Karita called out softly. “Here’s the two-footer with a cursed Fate and another one with a blank one.”

 

“Ah… silly humans,” Oberon croaked. “Have you got anything old Oberon can pour down his throat? This thirst is never slaked, never.”  
  
Just as Snape cursed himself for being three kinds of fool to have been lured to listen to an alcoholic centaur, Potter fished a small bottle of Muggle brandy out of his backpack and handed it to Oberon.  
  
The old centaur gulped it down and belched with deep satisfaction. “Aww, good, good fire. Oberon is pleased. I will tell you a story.”  
  
Snape rolled his eyes and braced himself for a piece of centaur claptrap.   
  
“Times ago, many times ago—but not too much, my eyes were already blind, and Karita here wasn’t yet shot out of her father’s nutsack—a man came to me. A man with a cursed Fate. He told me that he’d gone on a journey. A dangerous road. He wanted to capture a soul, but it was too well guarded, and his Fate had been cursed. He had been a man and now he was turning into a no-man, yet he was staying a man. He asked old Oberon if his Fate could be tinkered with. I told him that if he cut the Red String of his Fate and tied it to his Twin Flame, the curse would let him go. So he cut the Red String and tied it to his Twin Flame. And so his Twin Flame was taken just when he was needed most.”  
  
Snape listened to the riddling story, his mind whirling with an array of remembered meanings and allegories.  
  
“How do we cut this Red Flame?” Potter asked, looking dazed, eyes glimmering with deranged hope.   
  
“You don’t. The Twin Flame has to cut it and accept the change of Fate. Or the Twin Flame can hold it and follow. When two Twin Flames walk the Red String to the end, they will be reborn.”  
  
“How do we find the Red String?” Harry pressed on.  
  
“You look for it.”  
  
“Merlin, this is crazy,” Snape whispered.  
  
“No, don’t you see?” Potter whipped around to face him. “It’s a way out. All we have to do is… solve this riddle. Find this man, maybe. What if he’s still alive?”  
  
“Oh, he is!” Oberon said with a throaty laugh that made Severus cringe.   
  
Potter’s smile, winning and glorious, as if his hands held all the golden Snitches in the world at the moment, was almost sufficient incentive for Snape to get his faith back. Almost.  


 

*****

  
The journey back was monotonous but swift. No chasing apes or any other unforeseen difficulties. Severus kept rolling Oberon’s mysterious story around his mind, trying to discern how much of it was true, and if there was truth to it, how it pertained to his cause. They had a quiet supper and slept for a few hours to set out before dawn.   
  
When they got up in the morning, Severus realized that he needed to transfigure his clothes to fit his new size for the first time. The first of many.   
  
Hogwarts met them with hesitant silence. It was a school day afternoon, and where usually the grounds were swarming with children out for a bit of fresh air, even if the weather wasn’t half decent, the wide open area in front of the castle was almost empty.  
  
“I have a strange feeling,” Potter, who’d been withdrawn ever since they parted with Karita the centaur, said.  
  
“Let’s go inside.”  
  
Granger and Weasley were waiting for them just beyond the doors in the Entrance Hall, holding hands, the pressure of bad news to be told almost a visible weight on their shoulders.  
  
“What is it?” Severus asked harshly, wanting this to be over with, whatever it was.  
  
“We saw you on the grounds, Professor,” Granger started, taking a shaky step forward.  
  
“What is it?” Snape repeated, hating the Gryffindor habit of putting a buffer of positivity in before delivering the main blow.   
  
Weasley, as if he’d had a moment of uncharacteristic acuity, took her hand and shushed his friend with a stern look.  
  
“It’s Draco, Professor. He died. It’s going to be all over the news tomorrow.”  
  
Something inside Severus detached and went up to the arched dome and beyond. In a daze, he felt a hand take his own and squeeze it in desperate reassurance.   


 

*****

  
Severus Snape lay on his austere bed, staring unseeingly at the ceiling. It seemed to him that if he only stopped moving, stopped breathing, his curse would hold still with him. The world would stop and the initial numb shock of Draco’s death would never wear off; the crushing pain of failure would never come. Severus had never really loved Draco. At one time he’d despised him, even. And yet, failing someone so frail, so miserably defenseless, so… pathetic – it was a hundred times more devastating than losing a fighter.   
  
“Potter is here to see you,” Monvoisin’s voice called out from the sitting room. “I took liberties with your password.”  
  
“I’ll whitewash your venomous arse,” Snape said, getting off the bed.  
  
Harry Potter was standing in the middle of his sitting room, looking like a spiky-haired little burst of purpose, emanating complete abashment.   
  
“You’re here because?” Snape was not in the mood for coddling commiserating Gryffindors with puppy eyes.   
  
“Because misery does so love company?” Potter said with an absolutely disarming grin.   
  
It sounded sinfully tempting.  
  
“Not this time,” Snape whispered, and his lips pursed in a bloodless thin line.   
  
“I’m not going,” Potter pressed on, more for the sake of convincing himself.  
  
Severus took a breath and put on his most formidable teaching persona. “Please disabuse yourself of your delusions about my needing you.”  
  
“No. I know what you are thinking.” Potter took another step forward. His glasses were slightly askew again, and Severus wondered if he had known how vulnerably brave he looked like this, and used it to weasel his way into Snape’s heart.  
  
“Not by any stretch of imagination, you don’t,” Snape told him with a bitter little laugh to himself.  
  
“You think you’ve failed and thus earned your right to just sit around on your arse and vegetate till you dissolve into nothing.”  
  
That hit close to home. Snape felt blood pound in his ears in a rush of fury. How dare he…  
  
“Now, don’t you go apeshit on me!” Potter said shrilly, and out of the corner of his red-seeing eyes, Snape noticed that he was trembling visibly.   
  
“Leave,” Severus said in a stone-cold voice, his fingers itching to either grab a wand and hex the twit or grab the twit and bury his face into the crook of his shoulder.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Leave!”  
  
“NO.”  
  
Damn fucking Gryffindors. The wand it was then.  
  
Just as Severus was about to demonstrate the enormity of the consequence of making him give a warning twice, Potter rushed up to him and, grabbing his collar, pressed his lips to Snape’s mouth.   
  
It wasn’t even a proper kiss. Not that Snape remembered how a proper kiss felt. It was little more than desperate, despairing slobber, rushed and uncouth, but Snape couldn’t help but think that at that very moment he was flying down the abyss of that precipice he had been teetering on the edge for some time now. He was flying and, just like every time he flew, he was free.   


 

*****

  
The morning met Severus with a bunch of spiky hair sticking against his mouth and an erect cock sticking against his thigh. He felt a rush of shame, washed over by a wave of unabashed satisfaction. His bladder screamed, and he tried to untangle himself from Potter without waking him.  
  
Harry stirred and moaned sleepily. The third wave to ebb over Snape was sharp, guilty tenderness.   
  
“Getting up already?” Potter mumbled sleepily, dragging a knee over Snape’s legs. “Wait, I want to have another go before breakfast.”   
  
His adolescent, gritty physicality sent a rush of arousal spiraling through Severus. He cleared his throat to dispel a catch in his voice and said, “I have to take a piss,” before smearing Potter’s succulent pouty mouth with a wet kiss.  
  
“The shower then,” Harry said, and hopping off the bed, trudged to the loo.  


 

*****

  
Severus was first visited by regrets at breakfast, even before the post arrived to remind him in riveting detail that his godson was a broken dead puppet in a bed of gold, while he was with a young lover, stealing a bit of heaven in a flash.  
  
There was such an absurd normalcy about this self-deprecation that Snape actually welcomed it. It reminded him of times when self-hatred had been a part of his life, simultaneously eating at him and allowing him to go on. He knew Potter was throwing covert glances at him. He could feel some of them burning on the back of his head. He was grateful for them, actually: they made great fodder for his compunction.   
  
“Have you seen the  _Prophet_ , Severus?” the Headmistress asked in a tone she used when she visited ailing students in the hospital wing to inquire about their health.  
  
“I’m afraid this chronicle of journalistic integrity has finally surpassed my ability to read,” Snape said waspishly.  
  
“I’m afraid this is not the right time for sarcasm,” Minerva said with unnerving sadness. “Somebody is wiping out the former Death Eaters; that is what they think. Are you alright? If there’s anything I can…”  
  
“Right as rain, thank you, Headmistress,” Severus answered in a flat voice.  
  
So, the cat was out of the bag and hopping around on the media hotplate. At the moment most of the students’ heads were buried in their copies of the  _Prophet_ , but Snape could almost see the imminent start of a low whisper, heads of all colours huddled together in heated discussions about the kind of dreadful retribution that awaited their Potions Master.  
  
Before the bravest of those little gossips started to lift their heads up from the paper to see if their professor looked any different, Severus Snape left in a flurry of black.   
  
Potter caught up with him in the empty Entrance Hall. Severus schooled his features into an impenetrable mask and whipped around to face him. He’d expected anything: wounded doe eyes, disgusting Gryffindor understanding, but not this mix of mild annoyance and steely resolve.  
  
“I know you’re backsliding,” Potter said with a disappointed sigh. “I’m not going to talk about it now. But we have important things on our plate. Hermione thinks she’s onto something. Slughorn will take fifth- and seventh-years, at least for the rest of the week, and George Weasley will substitute for the younger kids. No, please don’t give me that eyebrow. You know he’s brilliant and probably a much better teacher than you are. Everyone’s in our classroom, waiting.”  
  
He wasn’t even giving Harry that eyebrow. In fact, Severus was just standing there, slightly gaping.  
  
“How long did it take you to learn that by heart?” he asked, his voice raw.  
  
“I practiced all morning,” Harry answered with a lop-sided sad smile. And Snape’s ego was very much relieved to see the flash of that kicked-puppy-dog look in his eyes.   
  
“Hermione and Ron think they’ve solved Oberon’s puzzle,” Potter said absently. Then he looked at Snape’s lips. “I fucking want to kiss you,” he whispered harshly, making Severus feel like he was standing with a salt-shaker over his open wounds. “But I’ll let you take that next step.”  


 

*****

  
When they opened the door to ‘their’ classroom, Snape half expected those inside it to start shooting stars out of their wands, pulling out a heap of party stuff from Weasley’s Wizard Wheezes and shouting, “Surprise!” judging by the looks on their faces.   
  
Granger stepped out of the crowd looking like she had just passed all the NEWTs in the world with flying colours.   
  
Severus braced himself for a long preamble.   
  
“Ron and I thought about this riddle all night, Professor,” she said.   
  
 _While Potter and I fucked all night_ , Snape thought and hoped his cheeks won’t flush with remembered pleasure.   
  
“I think we got it,” Weasley added triumphantly.   
  
“Well, Ron did, technically.” Granger gave him an adoring look and squeezed his hand.   
  
Snape rolled his eyes.   
  
“Mates. Can we get to the point, please?” Potter said imploringly. Severus turned to look at him and hoped he could see the silent ‘thank you’ in his eyes.  
  
“Ok, sorry. We think it’s Regulus Black,” Hermione Granger blurted out.   
  
“What?” Harry and Snape said together.  
  
“It was quite a crazy leap of logic,” Filius Flitwick said and scratched his head.  
  
“Well, our most important key is that it was a man, hunting for a well-guarded soul. And the timing – about twenty years ago or so. We thought that the well-guarded soul had to be the Horcrux. The locket. That very one,” Weasley said with excitement.   
  
Snape had to admit that his idea wasn’t even remotely half-baked.   
  
“We know for a fact that it was the most well-guarded one of all. Either Tom Riddle had no time to hide them all better, between his being a nonentity after Harry’s parents…” Granger paused and looked at Potter apologetically. “In any case, it could have been protected with a Fatecraft spell.”  
  
Thoughts and memories whirled in Snape’s head.   
  
“Come to think of it, in retrospect… he was researching concealing potions. He once mentioned a few Dark Artifacts he’d thought he’d left unattended. Lucius was supposed to…” Severus looked up in wonder. “I think you may be right.”  
  
“But I thought Regulus died at the hands of Inferi,” Potter said, and Snape watched the way his face lit up when it dawned on him.  
  
“Exactly, Harry. A man, turning into a no-man, yet staying a man.” Hermione said. Flitwick beamed at her, and Snape had a pang of envy. There was definitely gratification in unrestricted bestowal of praise on talented students.   
  
“Twin Flames,” Severus said, deciding to offer some input. “I’ve heard of them. They are soul mates, but connected through sharing a fate, not through kindred spirits."   
  
“Where does it leave us?” Potter asked, still visibly doubtful, but his entire stance was action-ready.   
  
“It leaves us at an impasse, since finding a Twin Flame for me scales somewhere next to winning the Centennial Wizarding Lottery on the probability meter,” Snape answered snidely.  
  
“That leaves us with Oberon claiming Regulus is alive somewhere. Which means he knows how to cut this… Red String of Fate, whatever it is. He’s already done it. Reversed the curse,” Weasley quipped.  
  
“Fatecraft curses cannot be reversed,” Filius Flitwick said, shaking his head.   
  
“It’s the matter of wording and terminology,” Granger said, jumping into her swot mode easily.   
  
“The single axiom of curse-breaking is that there are no curses that cannot be reversed, unless the spell is cast on someone fully willing. Those that cannot be reversed may be altered, held back, redirected.”   
  
“But  _Ars Fatorum_  spells aren’t your regular curses, they…”  
  
They went on and on and on. Their voices rolled and twined into a weirdly reassuring hum, and Severus floated above it, confused and suddenly excited by such immense un-loneliness.   
  
“Are you alright?” Potter asked beside him, dragging him back to here and now.  
  
“… we find him.” Weasley had just finished relaying his plan and reached into the front pocket of his robes to pull out something that resembled a Muggle cigarette lighter. It looked oddly familiar.  
  
“The Deluminator. It will take you to your truest desire. I’ve already filled it up.”  
  
It was only now that Severus realized exactly why they were called the Golden Trio. How they had managed to evade the full might of wrath and fury of Voldemort and his cadre of vicious followers time and again. It hadn’t been mere luck or riding on the shoulders of dozens of witches and wizards, each ready to sacrifice their lives for them, if only the Trio kept moving on. They clicked together like three pieces of a perfect puzzle. They were immensely effective. A miracle, really.   
  
“So, this is it!” Potter said, not even trying to hide elation and even a hint of sensual anticipation in his eyes. Severus wondered if he, too, was so glaringly obvious when he looked at Harry.  
  
“This is it,” he echoed.   
  
“There’s one more important thing,” Granger said, her voice a bit pinched. “Bill, I mean, Professor Weasley and Professor Flitwick and I researched what sources there are on Fatecraft. It seems that the influence of the spell slows if you don’t fight it. Acceptance is the key. On the other hand, if you try to interfere with your new fate, it speeds up exponentially. And this interference doesn’t even have to be… active. Simply having a reason to live… a desire to stay with your family or a loved on works just as well.”  
  
Harry Potter fixed him with a stare that easily gave both of them away, if only anyone cared to look.   
  
“Then let’s not waste time,” Potter said, without taking his eyes off Snape. “Hermione, could we go over your notes on  _Ars Fatorum?_  And tomorrow morning we’ll try to find Regulus Black.”  
  
“Sure. Here, I’ll minimize them for you. Harry, are you…” she started, then closed her mouth with a snap and turned to give Severus a piercing look. He held her gaze with something akin to a challenge. She really was going to give McGonagall a run for her money one day. Severus surmised that several decades from now, his portrait self would gladly discuss Potions with Monvoisin and Granger in her frame on the wall in the Headmaster’s office.   
  
“Thank you,” he said finally. “All of you.”   
  
He wished he could say more, that he was better schooled in demonstrating sincerity. It was probably the first time in his life people had gone out on a limb for him. Several people at once.   
  
“Let’s go,” Potter said, before the silence, filled with awkward smiles and understanding eyes, became completely embarrassing.  
  
“This is too dangerous,” Snape hissed at Harry, as soon as they entered the dungeons. “There’s still the matter of Black’s twin soul ‘being taken when he was most needed’.”  
  
“Let’s not get hung up on the verbiage,” Potter said in an irritated voice.  
  
“It’s not verbiage. It’s glaring idiocy to lunge into a search for an Inferius without even having considered all the variables.”  
  
“Can’t we think how to cross that bridge when we get there?”   
  
“Thinking how to cross bridges when they jump at you seems quite the Gryffindor  _Modus Operandi_. And I can name a few occasions when getting to the bridge before looking it up proved there not to be a bridge at all.”  
  
“Yes, and being a sitting duck seems quite the Slytherin Modus what-fucking-ever.” Potter stopped in his tracks and turned to face him. “I know I can’t exactly call you an active participant of Mission ‘Save Snape’. So let me spell it out for you in Slytherin language. I’m not doing this for you. Well, I am, but I’m doing it for me.”   
  
Snape wanted to say something about Gryffindors and their penchant for making others happy by force, but for no reason at all bit his tongue. After all, dumb Gryffindor luck often outweighed the lack of scheming and planning, so Severus thought.  
  
That night their lovemaking was urgent, as if they each tried to absorb the other, to stock up on it for an immeasurable amount of time ahead.   
  
“We will pull it off tomorrow,” Potter panted in the afterglow, and when he kissed Snape’s jutting collar bone, for a few blissful moments Severus actually believed him.   


 

*****

  
Severus Snape woke in the morning to the feeling of… strangeness would be the word he would use. He reached out for his wand on the bedside but instead touched his pillow. Dread washed over him like a bone-chilling current. He closed his eyes and practically saw that the oarless boat he couldn’t row was shaving off the snow from that iceberg. There was a rift in the belly of his vessel, made by the iceberg’s underwater spikes. He just didn’t know yet how big it was, how fast he would sink.   
  
He shot up and pawed for a wand to cast a  _Lumos_. The wand felt odd in his hand. His fingers didn’t seem to find all the familiar dents in it, and the spell only caused it to spurt a few sparkles. He was trying to adjust to its new size when Potter woke.  
  
“What is it?” Potter mumbled beside him, still half-asleep. When Severus failed to produce an answer, Potter reached for his own wand and lit up the candles.   
  
He had the grace not to comment, but his sucked-in breath was eloquent enough.  
  
Severus looked around his formerly narrow bed that now felt like a small island in the pool of pre-dawn darkness that filled his room. He was naked, but when he grabbed his grayish underwear, he realized that it was big enough to accommodate another one like him.   
  
“My magic is failing. I will need another wand,” he said, trying to contain himself, scared to death to turn around and see Harry probably towering over him.  
  
“Turn around,” Potter asked with faux casualness. When Severus didn’t he laid a warm hand on his back. The other hand covered his own, and Severus dared to look at it. It held his fingers like they belonged to a three-year-old.   
  
Then Severus Snape laughed. Then, he wept.   


 

*****

  
He had to give them credit, all of them. Not a muscle twitched on Weasley’s face, not a single hitched breath from Granger. Bill Weasley stood just as solemnly aloof, and Flitwick held on to his polite cheer with finesse.   
  
Apart from Flitwick, everyone was fully packed.   
  
“Hello, Professor,” Granger said, and only the tiniest tremble in her voice gave away the shock. He returned her notes with a small grateful nod. He’d made Potter read in them the previous night before allowing him to take his clothes off, and it had been a delicious game.   
  
Weasley handed him the Deluminator. Severus felt relieved there wouldn’t be any exchange of meaningless niceties under porcelain pretenses.   
  
“You know what to do, Professor,” he said and averted his eyes hastily.   
  
Taking the lighter in his hand, Snape closed his eyes and thought of Regulus Black. He’d been two years behind him in school, and though they shared a House, their paths seldom crossed. And now Regulus Black held the key to his future. Suddenly, this possible, almost-lost future seemed to be so uncomplicated and clear. Winters and summers to come. Lazy morning fucks with Potter, simply being able to cover his scrawny little arse with two hands. He’d give up the underclassmen, if George Weasley was willing. Potter had been right: he wasn’t a half-bad teacher. He’d have more time. Time. Precious time. Regulus Black. Time enough to tell Potter that he…  
  
A blue light sprang from the Deluminator and entered his chest. It tickled like a shade of long-forgotten sadness. Severus closed his eyes again and Apparated.  
  
When he opened his eyes, he was standing in the same classroom, with the same people. Only this time they didn’t bother to hide any of their shock.  
  
“It didn’t work?” he asked no one in particular.  
  
“Oh, it did,” Weasley answered hoarsely and cleared his throat.  
  
“It took you to me,” Potter said quietly.   
  
It was his eyes that Snape anchored to in order not to lose it completely. Potter was sitting on his haunches beside him. They were of the same height.  
  
“Well, this eliminates the major problem,” Granger said with a small smile after a long, tense pause. “Now we know who your Twin Flame is, Professor.”   
  
Potter beamed at her in a way that made Snape want to either gag or kiss him numb.   
  
“Let me try. I have a vested interest in Snape here having… how did you put it? A personally directed future. Everyone, cast a Lumos!” Potter said.   
  
A minute after, the Deluminator was filled to the brim, and it was Potter’s turn to hold it in his hand.   
  
Harry closed his eyes and took a deep breath. A bright blue light fumed out of the Deluminator and with a gentle wheezing sound entered his chest. His eyes flew open in wonder, and then he was gone.   
  
And then a realization shone in Snape’s mind, bright as day. It wasn’t really an ‘aha’ moment or a crushing rush of comprehension. In fact, Severus thought, he’d known it for quite some time now. The notion had simply crept into him somehow. For a time it had been brushing the edges of his subconscious at first, retroactively filling his memories, insinuating itself into being taken for granted. And now, when Harry Potter went Merlin knows where for his sake, his mind pulled it out from the depths of his being and placed it in front of him. He was hopelessly in love with Harry godsdamned Potter, and he wanted to live as long as it took to drink this cup to the dregs, to take everything that feeling had to offer and beyond that.   
  
“Oh, gods, no, Professor, stop, whatever it is, stop thinking it!” Granger’s voice came from somewhere above, and when Severus was pulled out of his reverie, he saw that his clothes were rapidly becoming baggier on him. His wand grew thicker in his hand, and he dropped it as if it were a white-hot rod of iron. The world itself was spinning around him like a mad roundabout, expanding, fading away in some places and filling with details in other.   
  
“Think… kittens! Umbridge’s fluffy kittens and pink tartan skirts and Bertie Bott’s snot-flavoured beans and first-years botching their potions and… and Neville being your apprentice for the rest of your days!” Granger screamed at him in a voice that was strangely booming, then picked him up like he was a rag doll and shook him. Tears were running down her face. Then it stopped. Severus looked around. The floor looked as if it were at twenty feet below. That is… if he were still six feet high. He was bundled in a heap of cloth that used to be his clothes. Suddenly self-conscious, he pulled them around his body.  
  
“Oh, thank god,” Granger said, and wiped at her eyes with a swiftly conjured handkerchief. “Harry would probably go ballistic, if he…”  
  
A loud pop interrupted her. Harry Potter appeared, smelling of salt and sea breeze.   
  
“He’s still there, in the cave, I think,” he said, panting. Then his eyes shifted to Snape. “What the hell happened here?”  
  
“We’re running out of time. I’ll explain later,” Severus said, cutting him off with a glare. He hoped he could still intimidate just by giving a stern look, even if he was less than a foot tall.   


 

*****

  
One by one, Harry Apparated Severus, Granger and Weasley to a rocky shore. The first thing Snape felt after the Apparition spin released him was a gust of fresh, salty wind, which scattered a few drops of seawater across his face. He gulped the air greedily, thinking it might be the last time he saw the ocean and was able to recognize it as such.   
  
“The cave is over there, see those breakers?” Potter said, pointing to the left and down, where the surf roared and beat against a cliff.   
  
“Are we sure Regulus is still there?” Granger asked, casting water-repellent spells on all of them in between.  
  
“No. Well, I don’t know. There’s only one way to find out,” Potter said and looked about gloomily.   
  
Severus wondered when the hell he got so softhearted that he couldn’t even ask any one of them to remove the damned Waterproof Charm.   
  
“You know what’s funny?” Potter told him as they set out for the cave. “I get to carry you in my pocket.” With that, he picked Snape up like a tiny toy and placed him carefully into the front pocket of his robes. The hem of the pocket reached up to Snape’s hips.  
  
“You do look like a mean little pixie on a teacher’s dais, Professor,” Weasley said and winked at him.   
  
Snape scowled and gleaned some satisfaction at the look Potter gave his best friend. Severus was close enough to warm his hands at the fire in his eyes.   
  
As they turned around a moss-covered rock, the maw of the cave opened right in front of them. The tide was high, and the waves licked and rocked at the entrance. A few tall stones stuck out of the rock bed like giant teeth.   
  
“Have your wands at the ready with a fire spell. Do not touch the water of the inner pond.”   
  
Inside, the cave was oddly cozy. They walked for a few minutes along the main corridor, as the roaring of the waves grew quieter and the air filled with thousands of soft pops from falling water droplets.   
  
Granger and Weasley were talking softly ahead of them, Potter was treading behind, wand out, his left hand over the front pocket of his robes where Severus perched.   
  
“You aren’t very talkative,” Potter said in an uneasy whisper, turning to look at him.   
  
“Having a squeaky voice doesn’t really pave the way towards lengthy conversations,” Snape answered snidely.  
  
“It’s not that… squeaky,” Potter said, and the tips of his ears flushed pink. It was all proof Severus needed. He sighed and pushed Potter’s fingers away from his pocket.  
  
“Don’t,” Harry said.  
  
Snape huffed and said nothing.  
  
“You know, Kreacher always told me that his master released him before he died here… but he went back to the house of Black and served that old harridan Walburga’s portrait,” Potter said, apropos of nothing.  
  
“Why are you telling me this?” Snape asked with a frown.  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry whispered. “Sometimes I feel that if I keep up meaningless talk… small, everyday things… some kind of a routine, you’ll stay here with me, and nothing is ever going to change.”  
  
“Having a routine is quite useless when it comes to escapist tactics,” Snape said and placed his tiny hand on Potter’s cheek. “It’s curious how your skin feels when I’m so small.”  
  
Potter’s eyes brimmed with moisture dangerously, and it was Severus’s turn to say, “Don’t.”  
  
“You’re right. There are a bunch of hungry zombies waiting for us around the corner,” Harry answered with a brave little laugh.  
  
“Not zombies. Inferi. They don’t eat people, only kill.”  
  
“I’m glad you’re lecturing again,” Potter said and pecked him on the top of the head.  
  
“Harry! I think we’re here,” Weasley called out.  
  
The low ceiling of the corridor soared upwards and became a large, ominous, scarcely lit dome. The light came from a single opening far above and cut the darkness inside with a thin beam. Beneath it lay a perfectly still pool of black water. Snape felt Potter shiver through the cloth of his robes.  
  
“What do we do now, Harry?” Granger whispered beside them.  
  
“We call him?” Potter answered with a slight shrug, and before Severus had a chance to comment on the grand scale of stupidity required to come up with something so idiotic, Potter hollered into the dark void, “Black! Regulus Black! I’m here to speak with Regulus Black!”  
  
His voice echoed, bouncing off the cave walls in rivulets of sound, taking on new, strange cadences, until it faded out completely.  
  
They waited for a few minutes that seemed to stretch into years. Finally, Weasley turned to look at Potter with defeat spelled over his face.   
  
At that moment, they heard a distant splash in the water.  
  
“We woke them!” Granger whispered, and assumed a dueling stance.   
  
Snape looked at Potter’s face and couldn’t hold back a small, unwilling smile. Gryffindors. Even after they saw the bridge burned and toppled, even when there’s nothing beyond it but waste and ruin, they still hoped to cross it.  
  
“Do not fire,” Potter ordered, and pursed his mouth.   
  
“Harry, one of them is coming at us. I can see it already. He’s butt-ugly.” Ron Weasley’s face creased in disgust.  
  
“Don’t fire!”   
  
This time, Severus tensed. Granger, too, noticed something and lowered her wand.   
  
The Inferius was hideous. It must have been a male during its life. Half of his face was missing, as if it had peeled off somewhere. He dragged a leg that was bent at an unnatural angle. The rags he was dressed in barely covered his body. A couple of ribs stuck out of his chest. As he hobbled closer, Severus could see that a dark spot on his naked, fishbelly-white forearm wasn’t a spot of cadaverous lividity, but a faded Death Mark.  
  
“Regulus Black?” Potter asked with a slight tremble in his voice.   
  
The thing hissed at him, baring its yellowed, rotten teeth. Not that there was much to baring to be done; most of his lips were missing.  
  
“Whooo… are ye...” he spoke, oozing saliva and pus.  
  
Granger was the first to recoil.  
  
“I’m Harry. Harry Potter. You brother’s… Sirius’ godson.”  
  
“I… know yer name… Will yer releathe me?” he lisped.  
  
Potter swallowed loudly.   
  
“I… yes. If I can. But I must ask a question.”  
  
“Athk,” the creature said, and started shifting from one foot to another in a way that was rapidly unnerving Snape. Somewhere far off, in the black denseness of the cave, another splash sounded.  
  
“Your spell. The Fatecraft spell. How did you reverse it?”  
  
“I didn’t. Thiriuth did. But it wath late, too late. He only thtopped it, me… from lothing me mind. But I don’t want me mind anymore… Take it, take it, take it! I want my new fate fulfilled!”   
  
“Sirius is dead now,” Potter said, his voiced hollowed out and filled with repulsion and horror. Severus looked at the water and saw movement – as if large, fat worms were swimming just under the surface. Swimming very fast.  
  
“Yeth… they told him they take him when he motht needed. Fool, he wath a fool. He never believed in Fateth, he thought he wath dreaming!” Regulus barked and started fidgeting even more.  
  
“They?” Potter asked, puzzled.  
  
“The Fatemathterth. Fuckers. They fucked with me…”  
  
“He looks like he’s trying to hold himself back…” Snape whispered in Potter’s ear. “Finish it up, quickly.”  
  
“Regulus Black. Can you tell me what the Red String of Fate is?” Harry asked. In his pocket, Severus could feel and hear his heart beat in a mad rhythm.  
  
The thing laughed. It was the most horrible sound Snape had heard since that moment Voldemort’s favourite pet hissed into his face, before sinking its fangs into his neck.   
  
“It’th in your handth. You hold it in your handth!” He laughed and laughed, and screeched. The splashes around them came with increasing frequency, and soon the water was filled with moving chunks of greenish-white flesh, dead, unseeing eyes, eyes gleaming with red, teeth bared, bones sticking out of rotten bodies, and the sweet, putrid smell of decay.   
  
Granger, Weasley and Potter stood there dumbfounded, and finally, Snape bellowed at the top of his lungs, “Run! Run you fools!”   
  
“What do you mean, in my hands?” Potter screamed in a last, desperate attempt to get anything out of the thing that once was Regulus Black, but all he got was mad, maddening laughter.   
  
Snape hammered his fists into Harry’s chest with all his might. “For fuck’s sake, Potter, run. NOW!”  
  
And they ran. They ran, shooting fire spells and putting up fire shields. The Inferi didn’t pursue them far, effectively hindered by fire, but Snape thought the long, tenacious claws of clingy dread that stretched out of that cave far beyond its borders and into their hearts would not loosen their hold any time soon.  
  
“I couldn’t… I couldn’t help him… I promised I would,” Harry started babbling, falling to his knees as soon as they were far enough from the cave to feel safe – at least in their minds.   
  
“It was out of your reach, Harry. Out of anyone’s reach,” Weasley whispered, holding a crying Granger to his chest.  
  
Severus watched fat tears stream down Harry’s face. He hugged his neck clumsily, trying to put out a burning in his own chest.   
  
“I wish I was big enough to wrap you in my cloak and carry you home,” he whispered in Harry’s ear.   
  
Potter looked at him in wonder. “It’s almost worth it, hearing you say that.”   
  
“Come on. Let’s get home. We have a lot of things to do.”  
  
For once in his life, Snape dismissed a waspish comeback without a single regret. There was nothing left to do, but say his goodbyes. And yet, there were still people around him who believed otherwise.   


 

*****

  
Hogwarts welcomed them with sheets of rain, battering against the short-trimmed grass of the grounds. The entire castle seemed in the know; the children, always sensing trouble unmistakably, were quiet and subdued. Minerva McGonagall was waiting with Flitwick and Bill and George Weasley in the empty Entrance Hall. Severus ducked inside Potter’s pocket, and Harry considerately covered it with his hand.  
  
Minerva lost it as soon as Snape peeped out of his little hiding place.  
  
“Oh, Severus! I’m so sorry…” she pulled out a handkerchief and pressed it to her mouth.   
  
“Please, Minerva…” Severus pinched the bridge of his nose. “You weren’t supposed to know.”  
  
“Oh, bollocks. In my school?” McGonagall glared at him. “Do you expect me to sit around on my bum and do sweet Fanny Adams?”   
  
Out of the corner of his eyes, Snape noticed the way Weasley blushed and Granger raised her brows at the Headmistress’ choice of words.  
  
“Is there anything I can do for you?” Minerva added as soon as she regained some of her composure.   
  
“Yes. Do not fret and… if George Weasley is willing to take up my position, I wholeheartedly recommend him.”  
  
Minerva sniffled and that tugged at Snape’s heart.  
  
“Thank you, sir,” George said solemnly. “I think I might do just that. The Wheezes… they’re not the same without Fred. Oh, and we have something for you.” There was a mysterious glint in his eyes, and Severus was relieved to see that the conversation flow was shifting to more cheerful waters.   
  
“George, Minerva and I made you a wand!” Flitwick said, beaming with pride. He opened a small satchel, produced a dollhouse box and handed it to Snape.   
  
Inside lay a toothpick. Snape took it in his hand blandly and immediately it stretched a bit to fill out to a regular wand size.  
  
“We’ve nicked one of the size-adjustable toothpicks from The Three Broomsticks and tinkered with the adjustment spell a bit, and well, a few other things. Ollivander might have done a much better job, but you know how it would have taken him ages.”  
  
Snape swished experimentally and the ‘wand’ produced a few meager sparks.   
  
“It may take some getting used to,” McGonagall said. “Just don’t use it for Apparition. It’s not stable.”  
  
“I say it’s bloody brilliant!” Ronald Weasley commented in an elated voice.   
  
“What did you use for the core?” Granger asked, and delicately touched the toothpick. “Ouch! It buzzes when I touch it. Just like a regular wand!”   
  
There was an awkward silence, and then George cleared his throat.  
  
“Um, well. We couldn’t think of anything small enough to be able to adjust to your size and still conduct magic,” Flitwick started and looked at George, as if asking for a hint.  
  
“We took an undercoat hair from one of my pygmy puffs. From the… area where their hair is softest. I have this tiny little female of rare green colour…her coat is extremely fine.”  
  
Potter and his friends snickered; Snape rolled his eyes demonstratively, but the fact was that he was utterly amused despite himself.  
  
“It is a marvelous piece of craftsmanship,” he said with a hint of humour.   
  
“Now tell us, did you…” Minerva started, but never managed to finish her questions, seeing crestfallen faces in front of her.  
  
“Regulus Black was of little help,” Severus told her.   
  
Beside him, Weasley exploded in anger. “Don’t say that! It’s still possible! He managed to stop his curse.”  
  
“Sirius did,” Harry said in a half-whisper, and Severus could almost see the way his eyes misted with all the possible might-have-beens. “And he was taken when he was needed the most.”  
  
Everyone went silent, and for Snape the air became dense with an excess of unuttered, uncomfortable sympathy.   
  
“I think I’ll just take the professor here home,” Potter said, coming to his rescue.   
  
There were no Gryffyndorish impulses or frantic bursts of activity. No one offered to run to the Library in search of books, hints, clues. Granger stood still, blinking back tears, Flitwick was worrying his lip, and both the older Weasleys seemed to find something of great interest on the pristinely scrubbed floor beneath their feet.   
  
This was truly it, Severus realized. He felt a need to say something worthy of the occasion, something that could suitably put a full stop to their… coalition of sorts, but the words caught in his throat.   
  
“So, what’s on the grapevine?” he asked no one in particular.   
  
“I’ve heard them say in the Ravenclaw common room that you were turning into a basilisk and taking the place of the old one,” Flitwick said with a cheer that was almost tragic.   
  
“Gryffindors think your Dark Mark is eating you alive,” George said and chuckled sadly.  
  
“I most definitely prefer the Ravenclaw way to go,” Snape answered and took a deep breath. “I might… wake up too small to talk to you tomorrow. In that case, this is goodbye. Minerva… please hang my portrait next to Monvoisin and Phineas in the dungeons. Granger, you can have my library. Weasley… good luck with this year’s Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs.”   
  
He didn’t know what else was there to say.   
  
“Good luck to you, too, Professor. I was going to say something about death being just another journey, but it sounds like an awfully  _tired_  platitude,” Granger said, tears shining in her eyes. “And thank you for such a generous gift.”  
  
Severus only nodded in response. This whole ceremony was wearing him down quickly.   
  
“I thought being able to look down my nose at you would be a much more satisfying experience, Severus,” Flitwick said in a voice that was quiet and rustling, like a shuffle of feet in fallen leaves, and petted his head clumsily.   
  
“I wish I could hug you, Severus,” McGonagall managed between sobs.  
  
“Oh, please. All of you! Just… stop.” Severus made a tremendous effort and… smiled. “Miss Granger, my understanding of reality has obviously taken a few raps to the head, because I suddenly find your unsaid platitude strangely appropriate. Farewell. I… it has been an honour to know you. All of you.” With that, he turned to Potter. “Take me home.”  


 

*****

  
Severus would have thought Potter would last till the evening. But the eruption came as soon as Snape’s door closed behind them and Harry placed Severus on top of his desk. He shimmied out of his outer robes and started pacing, ruffling his hair in that gesture that was so utterly James and that Snape had come to love so fucking much.  
  
“This is insane. This is fucking insane! No, no, no, I refuse to believe we gave up,” he said, huffing; his anger and pain were escalating visibly. “Why did we? Why are we sitting around? There’s still something to be done! It’s just another riddle. Red String of fate that we hold in our hands. It has to be something obvious! If you go and I find out that all that time, all that time it was just… sticking out at me like a dog’s bollocks, I won’t be able to forgive myself!”   
  
“Harry. Stop. Sit.”   
  
The sound of his name on Snape’s lips seemed to halt the run of Potter’s frenzy, because he halted and sat down in Snape’s ascetic wooden chair.   
  
“Don’t you understand? I can’t lose you,” he said in a desperate, hoarse whisper. Severus closed his eyes, feeling as if that water, that black, stale water, from the dread pool of Inferi or from the immense mass of the ocean around that iceberg and his oarless boat, was filling his heart to the brim, poisoning it.  
  
“Yes, you can. You have your entire life ahead of you and an infinite pool of people to choose from.”   
  
Potter trembled. “Do you realize… do you even realize how… how much of a tired platitude that is?” he hissed, practically spitting venom.   
  
“I do. But I’ve accepted my fate. Maybe it even grants me a few extra days.”  
  
“Like hell you have. I don’t believe it. You’re just… You just love giving martyrs an inferiority complex. Always have!”  
  
It was Snape’s turn to blow his top. “And what the hell do you suggest I do?” he roared.  
  
“Fight!”   
  
“Fuck you.”  
  
“Do you love me?” Potter asked, and once again, Snape felt his heart lurch. There was no point in lying.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Were you going to tell me at all?”  
  
“No.”  
  
A small cough came from the corner of the room, and a gibe died in Snape’s mouth, leaving a rotten taste behind.  
  
“Excuse me, boys. Did I hear it correctly? The cornerstone of your salvation is the Red String of Fate?” Monvoisin’s voice interrupted them.   
  
Potter leaped up.   
  
“Do you know anything about it?” he asked, placing both hands on Catherine’s old gilded frame.  
  
“Lad, I haven’t made a fortune poisoning unwanted husbands and expelling unwanted children from wombs for nothing. Highborn cows brought me their maid servants for black masses for a fortune telling.”   
  
“I’m impressed out of my wits,” Potter said, voice loaded with forced patience. “Now, get to the business.”  
  
“Severus, your new love always checks his manners at the door?” Monvoisin sang and played with her feather fan.   
  
“I wouldn’t, Catherine, if I were you,  _my new love_  has a way with persnickety portraits.”  
  
Monvoisin pursed her lips and looked down at Harry. “Look at your hands,” she said coldly.   
  
“And? I don’t think anything is out of order there,” Harry said.   
  
Monvoisin rolled her oil-painted eyes. “Look at your hands, Severus and tell me what you see,” she called out.  
  
Severus raised his palms to his face. They were just regular, boney hands. An old callus on the right middle finger from all the writing and marking, a blue spot on one of the nails where a mandrake bit him a few weeks ago, ink stains, a pattern of lines…  
  
Astonished, Severus looked up. It was indeed, as Potter had said, sticking out at him like a dog’s bollocks.   
  
“Exactly,” Monvoisin said in a superior tone. “Life line, Heart line, Mind line and Fate line, or the Red String of Fate, among others.”   
  
Potter turned his triumphant face to give Severus a ‘you see?’ look.   
  
“Don’t get too excited yet. You won’t be able to bring him back to normal… height. And it always comes with a price.”  
  
“What price?”  
  
“I don’t know. The Fateholders handle those questions individually. And the point of no return comes before they name their price.”   
  
“Who are these Fateholders?” Harry asked.  
  
“I won’t be able to tell you. The most common knowledge is that they simply exist. Severus! The spell is  _Fatum Revelio_. Close your left hand in a fist and cast it with your right. A flick, an upwards wave and a tap.” Monvoisin demonstrated the spell with flair, using her folded fan.  
  
“Why haven’t you ever told me any of this before?” he questioned.  
  
“You’ve never asked.”  
  
Severus didn’t give himself any time to think. If he had, he might have come up with too many reasons why the whole idea was futile.  
  
He pulled out his toothpick-and-pygmy-puff-pubic-hair wand and aimed at his balled hand.  
  
“ _Fatum Revelio_!”  


 

*****

  
It was one of the strangest experiences Severus had ever had. As soon as the words were uttered, his left hand started to rise up as if it was tied to a hot air balloon, and it was pulling it upwards. Severus looked up and opened his mouth in astonishment; there, tied around his wrist, was a thin, bright red string, which soared upwards to some invisible puppeteer.   
  
Monvoisin gave a quiet whistle, and Potter just stood there, gobsmacked.   
  
“Whoever created that bit of spellwork, it’s a good thing that he took it to his grave,” Catherine muttered.   
  
“What is it supposed to look like?” Severus asked, cancelling the spell.  
  
“Normally, you’d hold the string in your hand. Quite literally. And it wouldn’t be as taut as a bowstring. Check your palms, your Fate line is probably not there.”  
  
And it wasn’t, indeed. But one of the lines around his wrist seemed to run slightly deeper than would seem natural.  
  
“What can be done with it?” Harry asked with a note of resolution in his voice Snape didn’t like.   
  
“Not much, actually. If you care for the bastard enough, you can try and cut it, when it’s revealed. Hands, teeth, anything works. Then, supposedly, you’ll meet the Fateholders and have a bargain. Well, bargain is too sweet a word for it, since you don’t get to haggle, you just take what they give and fork out. Hard cheese there, boys.”   
  
For a moment, Potter seemed to ponder something, his eyebrows knitting together, then held out his left hand, balled in a fist and pronounced, “ _Fatum Revelio_!”  
  
Both Snape and Monvoisin emitted little yelps of surprise.   
  
Potter’s hand held nothing; neither was there anything tied around it.   
  
“He’s a blank slate!” Catherine shouted in sincere amazement.  
  
“That’s what Karita said, remember? That I have a blank fate. And Bane said that my fate is fulfilled. I must have become blank when Voldemort died,” Harry yelled, bursting with enthusiasm and renewed hope.  
  
Which Snape just could allow himself to share.   
  
“Well, does that change anything?” Harry looked at Monvoisin as if she were a miracle-working icon.  
  
“Not really, unless you want to follow that tosser to… wherever.”  
  
“Oberon, a mad old centaur said that if two Twin Flames walk the red string of Fate to the end, they will be reborn.”  
  
“It could really mean anything. One thing it doesn’t mean is that if you decide to share his fate, neither of you will meet whatever grisly end he is meant to meet,” Catherine answered with a shrug.   
  
“No,” Snape blurted suddenly.   
  
“What do you mean, no?” Potter asked and looked like he’d just been smacked across the face.  
  
“Just no,” Severus echoed himself, flew down from the table and walked towards his bedroom.  


 

*****

  
At first, Potter raved. Snape sat on the floor in the loo behind a warded door and listened to his things being thrown around, broken and  _Incedio_ -ed. Let him, he thought. He wouldn’t need any of that garb much longer. He only hoped to gods his books were intact – for Potter’s sake mainly. Something told him that Granger would be a fastidious and discerning little shrew when it came to mistreating books.   
  
When Harry slumped down on the other side of the door and began a litany of reasons why they should try and let him take Snape’s Red String of Fate, Severus set his jaw, steeled his resolved and considered a  _Muffliato_. When he heard heart-wrenchingly desperate sobs, he almost wrestled with his own hands in order not to open the door.   
  
And he only endured half an hour of complete silence.  
  
When Severus emerged from the loo, wand out, ready to stun the idiot if it was some kind of a silly Gryffindor trap, his bedroom was a mess, and Harry Potter lay naked in his bed, apparently sleeping.  
  
Severus sighed, and not bothering to pick up, climbed up the dangling sheets and lay on the pillow facing Harry. Potter’s red-rimmed eyes flew open.  
  
“I’m knackered,” he said quietly, in a manner of a peace offering.  
  
“Me too,” Severus whispered.   
  
“You’ve never told me. How does it feel? To be so small.”  
  
“It’s strange, but not completely unpleasant. I see so much more detail in the world. Smells, tiny sounds, colours. It’s… in a way it’s quite amazing. For instance, I can see every speckle of gold and brown in your eyes and every clogged pore on your face.”  
  
Potter snorted and smiled. “Does it look ugly?”  
  
“No, not at all. But some would think your face could use a good wash.”  
  
“Please, let me do it,” Harry asked again and, stretching out a finger, gently caressed Snape’s lanky hair.   
  
“No one gets to be a savior twice, Harry,” Severus answered, planting a kiss on that finger.   
  
“I can at least try. Why are you giving up on yourself so easily?” Harry shifted his face closer. There were still tear streaks on his cheeks, and Snape almost caved.  
  
“The question is, why are  _you_  giving up on yourself on a whim? You have the whole world laid out for you. Why would you want to toss it away?”  
  
“Sometime the world you save is just not for you to live in,” Harry said.   
  
“Is that some hackneyed phrase from a Muggle book?”   
  
“Maybe. This is how I feel.”   
  
“Go to sleep.”  
  
“By the way. Love you too.”  


 

*****

  
Snape’s sheets had never been proud of their thread count, but when he woke up next morning, he thought he was lying on spikes and ropes. He pawed for his wand. The toothpick felt like a spade shaft in his hand. When he grabbed onto it, however, it shrank to the proper size, and Snape was flooded with sharp relief, as if he’d just taken the most satisfying piss after holding out for too long.   
  
Potter was nowhere to be seen. In fact, he could barely recognize his room. It was immense; the ceiling swam in foggy flow and not far off a fire roared. Must be the candle. He must have shrunk to no more than an inch overnight.   
  
A shadow hung over Severus, and a gigantic, slowly moving shape appeared. The voice boomed, and Severus plugged his ears with his fingers helplessly.   
  
Potter’s face, magnified to the point where Severus could camp out on his nose, swam into view.   
  
Casting a  _Sonorous_  Charm, Severus scowled and said, “Just don’t sneeze on me; you’ll blow me away to kingdom come.”  
  
Potter smiled, and for a moment Severus was fascinated with the way human teeth looked up close.   
  
And yet, even at that scale, there was something about Harry’s smile…  
  
“You don’t take no for an answer, do you?” he demanded, folding his hands across his chest.  
  
Potter shook his head. Then he disappeared somewhere, and after a moment a minimized piece of parchment fell in front of Snape’s feet.  
  
 _I’m already an inch smaller. Hope to catch up with you soon. Also – you look awful hot naked and tiny._  
  
Snape’s hand flew to his face.   
  
“So, what do these Fateholders look like?” he asked.  
  
After a few moments, another parchment landed on the pillow.   
  
 _I don’t know if I saw them. I cast the charm and grabbed your String. All I saw was just a million red strings entwined. Someone in my head asked me if I want to share your fate, and I said yes._

As Severus was reading, another parchment flew by. All it said was,  _Love, Harry_.  


 

*****

  
He had an almost lovely breakfast of breadcrumbs, a single wild strawberry and a dollop of cheese on an Acromatula silk handkerchief in Potter’s pocket, protected from the deafening noise of Hogwarts by a double _Muffliato_ , cast by himself and Harry. Acromatula silk still didn’t feel exactly soft to Severus, but at least it resembled cloth, albeit rough.  
  
Afterwards, Potter took him to his own rooms facing a small courtyard in the unused part of the castle. There on his table was an intricate doll house with a library.  _Wait for me here_ , the note on the table said.   
  
Snape had to admit he was impressed, even though at the core of it, the very idea of being a Thumbelina seemed ridiculous.   
  
“Minimize a bottle of Firewhiskey for me while you’re at it,” Severus hollered to Potter.   
  
This was when the post came in.  
  
The owl was tiny, some sort of a spotted owlet. It flew through the open window with a hoot that almost made Snape’s ears burst, causing small hurricanes in the air under its wings. Snape watched Harry take a note from its leg in slow motion, and then it saw him. Snape couldn’t tell whether it was a bit of mousy-gray Acromatula silk wrapped around his body or his size that made him look attractive as prey, but at the next moment, it went at him.   
  
Potter’s voice boomed above, Severus could even tell it was a desperate ‘NO!’ and the next moment he was flying above the sea of green.   
  
It was sheer luck that when the owlet grabbed him, he had his toothpick wand in his hand. A simple Jelly-Legs did the job. The owl screeched and let go of him, flying away with a bundle of Acromatula silk in its paws.   
  
Casting a swift cushioning charm about himself, Severus landed in a pithy leaf full of dew and swore. He couldn’t even tell where he was and which way was Potter’s window. Climbing down to earth, he took in his surroundings. The world around him was full of smells, sounds he’d never heard before, rich textures and colours. An immense jungle of grass, roots and magnificent flowers, it was bubbling with life. Severus thought that if the worse came to the worst, he could actually live there. He could even get used to being alone. It wouldn’t be the kind of loneliness the last man on the planet would feel; there were people out there. Out of reach, yes, but the mere thought that somewhere, men and women and children were going about their lives was warming.   
  
For a few leisurely moments, Severus was just watching it all. A grasshopper landed on a leaf just above, causing a small waterfall of dew. Off to the left there was an ant trail. A bright red ladybug hurried by, leaving curious footprints. Was there a man in the world besides him who could claim he’d seen a ladybug’s footprints?   
  
He got up and started walking at random. After half an hour of walking he found what must have been a patch of late-blooming clover flowers. Their smell was divine. Climbing up to reach the lowest one, he dipped his hand into the bloom, and it came up with rich, velvety substance. It turned out to be sweet and nourishing.   
  
Watching out for bees and hornets, Severus jumped down and started walking again. The ground was uneven, and there was a lot of jumping over roots, ducking under stems and cutting through thick shrubbery to be done. Very soon his enthusiasm started to wear off. It didn’t take him long to realize that being Merlin knows where, barefoot and naked, armed with a flimsy excuse for a wand, wasn’t the best start in a brave new world.   
  
When he sat down for a little break, an ant scurried by, and Severus was visited by a self-mocking certainty that he was getting smaller still. There was no other choice but to wait.   
  
It was well past noon when he found himself a flock of tiny pansies huddling below a tall bush, and set about making a lean-to of sorts beneath its roots. As evening fell, and mosquitoes appeared, this microcosm was losing its allure by the second. He could never have imagined how ugly a mosquito looked up close. There was a small pile of their dead bodies gathering about him, and when the next one he hexed with a fireball burst out with blood, the world around him seemed positively hostile, and Severus also realized that he mustn’t be too far away from Potter’s window.   
  
Severus picked a safe-looking branch and started climbing up the bush. In the last light of the setting sun, he saw a distant castle wall, covered with moss. He got back down, wrapped himself in a pansy and started in the general direction of the wall. After a few hours of walking, he found an old, discarded inkpot. It was probably his best chance to make it through the night. Climbing inside and wrapping himself in his pansy, Severus was asleep within seconds.   


 

*****

  
He woke up in a large cave with a round opening in its side about six feet from the ground. It took his addled brain a minute to realize that he was still inside the inkpot. Was Potter looking for him? Probably yes. Maybe he was just being extra careful and afraid he’d stomp all over him accidentally? Severus got out and spotted a huge ball of yellow puff off to the side. Must be a dandelion, he thought.   
  
Dandelion nectar didn’t taste half as good as clover, but it had to do. Another curious thing was that the water didn’t have to flow anymore. Small cabochons of it about Severus’s height were scattered around. He could walk into them, wash up, drink and walk out. He briefly considered risking an Apparition into Potter’s Thumbelina house, but thought better of it. Being unable to die before his Fate ran out and splinching did not make for a great combination.  
  
Severus gathered as much dandelion pollen as he could under the mouth of the inkpot, and decided that staying close to it was his best chance at being found.   
  
The mosquitoes didn’t bother him that night, but there were other things, smaller things: little ticks and fleas, probably. They didn’t try to attack him per se, but the curiosity in their numerous ugly eyes and alien-looking snouts was disconcerting.   
  
When he woke the following morning, the world around was falling out of recognition. The light was scattered in such a way that Severus couldn’t tell what time of day it was. The cabochons of water were small hills to him and teemed with life, creatures he’d never fathomed could exist, and the soft pollen he’d gathered the day before turned into chunks of fiber he had to gnaw on.   
  
The next time he slept, his wand gave. He woke up next to a white, sand-papery log, the last vestige of his old life. Time dragged on endlessly, and black, dull despair seeped into Severus drop by drop. For unnumbered eternities he lay there, slipping in and out of feverish sleep. When he woke, he stared up into where once there was a sky and now greenish mist swam and swirled, and parsed his memories. At first, he could feel hunger and thirst, but then those feelings numbed, too, and when Severus could sense the pull the grayness was exerting on him, he welcomed it. Closing his eyes, with the last scrap of his consciousness he felt the String on his hand for the first time since he’d cast the  _Fatum Revelio_  spell. Its hold on him loosened, and finally, it slipped away.  


 

*****

  
Severus Snape came to because of a smell. He couldn’t tell what it was, but it wasn’t unpleasant, just… utterly new and unlike anything he’d smelled before. He opened his eyes. Above him, creamy clouds streaked the purple sky, strewn with unfamiliar stars. He rose on his elbows. To the left, there were gently rolling hills, but their shape was highly unusual. Somewhere not far off, a sound of waves lapping at the seashore could be heard. Tall, thin, grass-like trees or their lookalikes raised their branches to the purple above. Severus had never seen such a shade of blue in plants. If those were plants. A flock of white… birds? Creatures? A flock of beautiful somethings slid across the sky above him. Standing up, he realized what the strangest thing about this new world was. He felt quite proportional in it. His hands tickled and he scratched them. A sparkle came out of his fingers. So, there was magic, too. A different kind of magic, but it could be wielded.   
  
And then he felt the pull. He looked into his left palm. A thin red line ran through it where his Fate line should have been. Driven by an impulse, Severus closed his eyes and balled his fist. When he opened them, he was holding a thin string of magic.  
  
It had a direction.

 

-The End-

 


End file.
